The World In His Hands Science Class Blog - SCIENCE BETWEEN THE PAGES

Boreal Forests - Lesson 8

10/31/2022

Manna moment:

For our recognition of God's great creation we learned verse 5 of Psalm 95 to add to our first four verses that we have been learning.

Psalm 95:1-5
"Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise.
For the LORD is a great God and a great King above all gods.
In His hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are His also.
The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land."

We are learning these with some hand motions to help us remember.

Opening Activity: Review Vocabulary

With all the students sitting in a circle, I gave a few students a fly swatter. I would read the definition of a vocabulary word and the students with a fly swatter would swat the correct vocabulary word. After they swatted the card, they were to pass the fly swatter to the next person on their right.

Read Aloud

This book touches on all the different kinds of forests, their flora and fauna. It also teaches the differences between the different forests in reference to climate and rainfall. These are great books for elementary students. They have very short, one sentence text for younger learners along with more details of each picture in the back for older learners.

Where are the Boreal Forests? Using their map in their guidebook, they could color where the Boreal Forests are located.

Pine Cone/magnolia cone experiment

1. We sorted pine cone and magnolia cones into small and large.
2. Then we sorted them based on whether the cone was open or closed
3. We looked at the different parts of a cone (the seeds and scales
4. With our tweezers, we attempted to find any seeds left in the cones.
5. We submerged them in the water to see how they would react.

Sorting, Looking, Observing

Comparing a pine cone to a magnolia cone.

Noticing similarities.

Pine cone attached to its branch discovery.

Collecting data

Opening a magnolia cone to find its red seeds.

Giving the pine cones a little bath to see how they react.

About an hour and a half later, the pine cones that were in the tub of water, were completely closed up.

Always ready to begin their science class in the Route 104 Science Airstream.

Sorting cones in our Route 104 Science Airstream

Counting the cones

Magnolia Cone

Magnolia Cone seed

This is the pine cone that we submerged in my Route 104 Science class

This is the pine cone all closed up after being wet an hour and a half prior. As it dries up, it begins to open back up again.

Layers of the forest

The three main layers of the forest are the forest floor, the understory and the canopy. The emergent layer is found only in the rainforests and there are the herb and shrub layer as well within a forest where different plants and animals live. Within the biomes of forests, there are different ecosystems in the layers of the forest.

I gave each of my students a paintstick (free at Home Depot) to color like a tree and then used clothespins to mark the different animals that lived in the different layers of the forest. All the instructions for this are on the TPT printable below.

Layers of the Forest Hopscotch

As they finished these activities, they could come to the door and 'hop' right on out naming the different layers of the forest on their way out. Typically, I have just taped boxes to the floor to do this, however, I recently invested in an Agility Ladder which saves me some class prep time and the students can still jump to the different layers.

Student work

Last week, I introduced making a Biome sheet to review the different parts that make up the Grasslands Biome. There is cutting, coloring and gluing involved and it doesn't all get done during class. It is such a joy to me to share the student's work. I love seeing them learn, what an honor and joy!