Flexibility and 1st grade

When we got to Farmstead to take the first graders around the wetlands, we were informed that there was a high chance of thunderstorms and that we will be doing stations instead.  We had 5 minutes to figure out our station before the 1st graders came so that we could teach it to them.  It was different but over all I enjoyed it.  I had the dead or alive station with dead leaves and branches that the students had to dig through to find living things.  I then would collect all of the insects and put them in jars with magnifying lids so that they could look at them more closely.  This activity was actually great because the students loved that they could look at the things they caught.  They had so many great hypothesize on why certain bugs live in dead things.  I think students really liked our stations despite the fact that they couldn't really be outside.  I also liked that it was different then our other days.

After doing the readings, I took the bioregional quiz and scored an 8.  I realized that I don't actually know a whole lot about my region but I know the obvious things like growing season, where deer’s are at, where winter storms come from, etc.  What I found interesting was that I was unsure of how much rain we got in a year, and that I don't know species very well like the different types of grasses. This quiz made me curious and I ended up looking up what those answers were.  I had no idea that Indiana had so many different types of grass like bluegrass, tall fescue, ryegrass, bent grass, zoysla and more.  Also I didn’t realize that we get an average of 42.44 inches of rain each year.  I liked that the quiz made me curious of my environment in Indiana.