Ecology & Enchanted Gardens

By:

After an introductory vocabulary lesson about landforms and natural resources, the class played charades to act out the shape of some comm landforms with our bodies ( arms touching in front of our bodies flat for plain, or fingertips touching in front of her face for mountains, waving arms for ocean, etc cetera) . Afterwards, we applied and built upon our knowledge through a drama based instruction lesson where the teacher pretending to be a tour guide and students role played traveling in various ways to "visit" and learn about three major biomes. Students recorded information learned about land, resources, wildlife, and the location of the Sahara desert, Amazon rainforest, and Siberian tundra in a travel journal . We were very fortunate to have a guest, Michael Longoria come and talk to our class about musical instruments and their history and cultural importance from two of these areas as well. We discussed how humans affect the natural resources and the living things in these biomes and some of the problems that can occur. We also brainstormed possible solutions such as to encourage others to stop cutting down trees and look for other ways to make money or build shelters. Some students wrote songs, plays, letters, or posters to teach others about some of the things they had learned.  

As a final project, the class used Natural Resources from around our school grounds and built various landforms while making an enchanted container garden. We used rocks,moss,sticks,soil,shells,nuts as well ad herbs and Chia grass from a nursery to make miniature habitats. We also built a butterfly garden in old wheel barrows.