DFW Earth Day 2014

Today the 1st graders celebrated Earth Day at the airport.  There were live animals, fossils, handouts with tips about protecting the environment and a concert by a band called Vocal Trash featuring instruments made from recycled materials.  Students learned about the life cycle of a butterfly and got to go inside a tent with live butterflies.  They got to see and touch some live animals that we share the earth with like a snake, turtle, skink, tarantula, opossum, chinchilla, and more!  We heard lots of ways to protect our world.  Here are some of our adventures:

We saw all the stages of a butterfly's life cycle: eggs, caterpillars, chyrsalis, and adult butterflies.

The biggest skull below is a sea turtle.

Above are some dragonfly nymphs and other young insects that can be found in water.  Below are some of the live animals we saw.

We also saw a giant model that showed how water can erode the soil.  That does not look like a safe place to build that cabin!

The kids had a great time and should be able to tell their parents lots of ideas about how to protect our world!  And all our chaperones deserve a big thanks for their hard work!

Earthworms!

One of the things we are learning about right now is earthworms.  This is connected to our garden plot and what we are learning about living things like plants and how living things interact.  We have already been reading about worms and how they help plants, but today we got a little more "up close and personal" with some live earthworms.  Students got to touch them to see how they reacted and feel their bodies to see if we could feel the little bristles that help them move.  They also noticed that the worms did not like the light and kept trying to go underground.  You can see some 1st graders intently observing their worms in these photos: