A Sad Day

Today we had a sad day - we had to say goodbye to Angel because she and her family are moving. We will miss Angel very much, and we know that it can be a little bit scary to start at a new school. So to help her get off to a great start we sent her on her way with a Compliments Car Wash. Angel walked between two lines, and each student complimented her on something positive she added to her classroom. I don't think Angel is going to have any trouble making new friends because almost everybody said she was a good friend who followed the Code of Conduct.

After we had our car wash, we got one last picture of The Bair's Den with Angel. Angel, even though you are moving away, you will always be part of our family! We will miss you!

The Bair's Den

Our silliest faces

Lentic and Lotic

We did a project about lentic and lotic water.

 If you want to learn more click here.

The Lentic Lotic Experiment

We went outside to see if the ponds were lentic or lotic.we saw the first body of water it was moving but we new it was healthy because plants growing in the river. Then we saw the next body of water. It was flat it did not move plants were growing out of the pond.it was lotic. Are hypothesis was correct.We have a healthy water system because we saw a blue haren.

by Ben and Justin

looking in the outdoors for lentic and lotic

                                          
                                                 Emmy, Angel, Destiny, Carley
         

                       We learn that we have lotic water at bear creek and it is very healthy and we know that because lots of birds and animals live there. We got to go outside and see are water systems and the animals that live in it. Are hypothesis was  right  because we said that we have lentic and lotic water and we do have lentic and lotic.



   

Lentic and Lotic

We are going to be telling you about Lentic and Lotic water systems. Lentic is calm water and Lotic is wavy water. How we know that it is we went outside and saw it in are stream and pond at are school. We have both lentic and lotic water systems. We saw inside of animals habitats. We want to know what a brook, stream and creeks are different. The water is healthy because it has food for animals. We saw algae in the water.

By Kohl, Ian, Austin, Carson

Our mini field trip outside!

We went outside to find lotic ponds and lentic systems in science class, so we went  out side and we looked around. We found a lotic water system and we had lotic.
  We seen a great blue heron, It was in the pond eating algae from the outside of the pond.
   then we went to find a lentic water system we looked around and we seen a lentic system. We also saw a few habitats. It was a duck habitat, which was a pond, same as a lentic water system. Our hypothesis was that we had lentic and lotic water systems at Bear Creek. From our proof and our pictures our hypothesis was correct. Since there is algae growing on the side of the pond and we saw a great blue heron that tells us that our systems are healthy.   

Our Lentic and Lotic Field Trip

     Bear Creek is a safe environment. There is clean water and Bear Creek normally has lentic waters but in one section there was lotic water. we saw mini waterfalls. We saw the water move because of the wind. It has tons of wildlife. We also saw ducks diving for fish in the pond. We saw the great blue heron standing on algae. We also saw places for animals too live during the Winter. Our hypothesis was correct, there are lentic and lotic water systems at Bear Creek. I think when the wind is active its lotic, but when its not active it lentic.

     We learned many things about nature and how some waters are lentic and lotic. The water is healthy because, animals and fish live in them.
   
     When we did this we went into the habitats of many animals on school property.

Out in nature and wildlife

Maggie,Rochelle and Jordyn

We went outside on a walk for science class and took pictures of lentic and lotic water.We saw many kinds of ducks and a Blue Harren and a bunch of other thing like mud that came from lotic water.Our hypothiesis was right we have lentic and lotic water at our school.We only have fresh water in our school but when you go outside you can see algae in the lakes and ponds and that is what makes our water unhealthy outside.

It is very wonderful to have nature at our very own school Bear Creek!

Puppet Pals

We've been learning how to use all of the different apps on the iPads these last few weeks, and we are really enjoying the games and activities to create projects and practice our skills. One of the apps is called Puppet Pals, and we can use this app to create our own story and act it out.

Here's our first finished project, a puppet play by Emmy! Enjoy!

Exploring Water Systems - Part 2

Today we took the next steps in the scientific process to see what we actually learned about the water systems here at Bear Creek. To help the kids work through the more challenging parts of the scientific process, Analyzing Data and Drawing Conclusions, they had the following questions to answer:

Each group was given an iPad different than the one they took pictures with yesterday. The kids had to work together to analyze the data collected by the other group and also think about the observations they made while we were on our walk. We took notes using the Notes app on each iPad. The groups worked really hard to answer the questions and record all that they saw yesterday.

Tomorrow we will finish our tasks from today and *hopefully* each group will get their results published here on the class blog! We should all have our results published by Thursday so definitely check back to see what we learned from our experience!

Our Mini Field Trip

In Science we are starting our unit on water, and the first thing we're learning about are different types of water systems. Today we learned the words lentic and lotic. A lentic system is a still water system, while a lotic system is a flowing water system.

As Mrs. Bair was introducing the vocab words, people in our class started to share lots of ideas and questions. Soon she started to write down everything we were saying on the board. When she stopped, we realized that we were actually using the Scientific Process!!

Here's what we talked about and shared:

Observations:

My mom told me the Chesapeake Bay flows into the ocean.

I’ve seen the water flowing under the bridge.

I could see the water flowing under the bridge when I was walking home when it was raining the one day.

I could see the water coming from the side of the creek.

On nature walk I think I saw two lentic water systems.

Questions:

Can lentic and lotic water combine?

What happens if lentic and lotic water mixes?

Hypothesis:

I think we have lentic and lotic water systems here at Bear Creek.

Mrs. Bair told us that we were going to go outside and collection some data. We collected our data using the iPads! We took pictures, and Lydia had a great idea! She told us to use the notes to write down everything that we saw and noticed. Even though we were right next to our school, it was a REALLY exciting field trip. We even got to see the great blue heron!

Tomorrow we're going to analyze the data to see what we found. We think we already know that we've proved our hypothesis, but we have to make sure. We also think we've drawn some conclusions about how good the water system is here at Bear Creek! We will be sure to share our pictures and tell you all about the rest of the process tomorrow!

Science Olympics

Students in the Bair's Den and students in Mrs. Towsen's class spent three days last week learning how to use a variety of scientific tools by participating in a variety of events we called the Science Olympics.

Having spent a day in the lab getting introduced to the tools, what they looked like, and why we used them, the kids got down to business and practiced using these tools to complete a series of tasks. These tasks included:

• The Standing Long Jump (practiced measuring length with a meter stick)
• Estimation Distance Challenge (practiced measuring distance with a trundle wheel)
• The Discus Throw (practiced measuring length with a ruler)
• The Big Head Contest (practiced measuring circumference with a measuring tape)
• The Right-Handed Marble Grab (practiced measuring mass with a balance and grams)
• The Dictionary Pull (practiced measuring friction and force with a spring scale)
• The Left-Handed Sponge Squeeze (practiced measuring volume with a graduated cylinder)

As you can see from the pictures in our slideshow, the kids have a great time participating in these different events.

More than having fun, though, the students in our classes really developed an understanding with the tools, how they are used and what they are used for during scientific experiments. Every student in the Bair's Den passed their quiz on the tools! When we talked about it the class overwhelmingly agreed that the time they spent actually using the tools helped them understand the meanings in our student guide and gave them the background knowledge to be able to think about other jobs you can do with those tools.

We're looking forward to planning and doing many more experiments using these tools throughout the year!