Wednesday was our final ECO for the year.  Despite the steady rain when we first left we had a lovely final morning in the woods and actually saw a bit of sun.  Alas, I did not take any photos, but I am including some from throughout the year.  A huge thank you to Eve Bernhard, our leader from North Branch Nature Center, and Barbara Fortune, who accompanied us each week as a volunteer.  Also thank you to all of the parents and grandparents who joined us for a session or two.  We had a fantastic year of ECO!

On Friday morning we were extremely fortunate to have Steele's grandparents visit us to make bluebird houses.  Mr. Craig brought all of the materials for each child to make a house.  He graciously demonstrated for children and adults and then we went to work.   This was a really fun project for a rainy Friday morning!  For the children working with me it was also a great opportunity to watch their teacher try and fail and try again (I need practice hammering nails without bending them!)  A huge thank you to Mr. Craig, Grandma Susan, Kellee Mazer, Susan Laskaris, and Mary Jane and Spencer Potter - all of the adult support made this a huge success.

Last week we finished writing the pages for our nature name books and created covers for them.   Children used pictures of their animals and looked for shapes to construct a collage of their animals.   As soon as the books are put together and we share them with reading buddies these will be sent home!

Our current science unit is an exploration of the structure and function of the human body.  In this unit we have examined various structures of the body and how their structure is suited to their purpose.  Recently we explored bones, focusing specifically on the bones in our hand.  Using an x-ray image we noticed that our hands are made up of many bones, which allow for a much broader range of movement than if they were made of just a few bones.  To help deepen our understanding of this we did an activity in which students had 30 seconds to put pegs into a peg board.  We recorded the number of pegs each student was able to place and then students had an opportunity to have their thumb and first two fingers taped, simulating what it might be like if our fingers were made of just one bone.  We repeated the peg activity and recorded our data.  We noticed that while individual children were able to place a varying number of pegs in 30 seconds, every child placed fewer pegs when their fingers were taped, because it was much more challenging to pick up the pegs and maneuver them.  We came to the conclusion that their are many things we might not be able to do if our hands weren't made of so many bones and able to bend the way they can.

In conjunction with this and as a follow up to our becoming birds lesson during ECO  we also explored structure and function of bird beaks.  We looked at pictures of a variety of birds noting characteristics of their beaks.  Some were long and pointy, while others were not as pointy and had more of a scoop shape.  We then used various tools to simulate different bird beaks trying to answer the question "Which beak works best for different foods?"  Perhaps the best part was eating the gummy worm at the end!