The Fertile Crescent, Short Stories, and Pollination
November 2, 2018
Anne Glanz and Sharon Packer
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| Plants about 1 1/2 weeks ago. |
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| The plants yesterday. |
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| The plants 5 days ago. |
We started two new units this week- Mesopotamia in Social Studies and Short Stories in Language Arts. Using a classroom map, our students noticed some of the salient geographic features of the Fertile Crescent including the mountains, deserts, rivers, and fertile soil. Each of these elements made the region perfect for the beginning of the first civilization. Ask your child to explain how these features helped encourage nomads to settle there. To start our new Language Arts unit, students learned about the elements of a short and then had to look for evidence that these elements were present in the story entitled Move Over, by Jack Gantos. We will be reading several of this author’s entertaining short stories during the next few weeks. Our fast plants are zooming through their life cycle. This week’s highlight was learning about pollination and then hand pollinating the many flowers that have emerged on our brassica plants. Many pods have already developed. Some students have noted that the petals are already starting to drop and that some of the leaves are not quite as deep green as they were just last week. Why is that happening? Ask your resident scientist to try to come up with answers to these questions.
