Habitat | castlerockelementary

Our Habitat

Any and all parents are welcome to volunteer on Wednesdays during Habitat Education. We see each grade level for 40 minutes. Please contact Catherine Mackin, or Bill McCurley for logistics. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Kindergarten and First Grade Habitat

Kindergarteners and First graders spent the first months of Habitat Ed learning about the cardinal directions (North, South, East, West) and the corresponding directional spaces in the Habitat. They created guidebooks with illustrations and samples of plant life from each area, and began to recognize the different conditions for life in the different parts of the space.

Now that the temperatures have dropped, we have shifted our focus. We began by learning about plants' reliance upon sunlight for life - we focused on sunflowers (which grow in our garden boxes) and heliotropism (the following of the sun's movement across the sky by the plant - sunflowers exhibit this throughout the budding stage but stop when they bloom because their heads are too large and heavy and their stems too rigid).

Last week we began learning about clouds and weather and the change of seasons from Fall to Winter. (The solstice is December 21.) We learned that clouds are made almost entirely of water and that billions of tiny water droplets come together to create a visible cloud.

Second and Third Graders

For the first months of the year, second and third graders played a huge part in beginning to build our composting system! Students began this process in May of last year, when the District's Sustainability Division gifted CRE with three different composting systems, inviting us to experiment with each of them to determine which was the best. The cafeteria staff, led by Kathy Henderson, has been very helpful in our efforts, putting aside Harvest Bar leftovers and vegetable/fruit scraps from lunch prep on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, to add to the bins. The kids have had a great time adding the green waste to the bins, and mixing it in with dried leaf litter from beneath the gambel oak in the Habitat, and mulch. They spin the bins around and check them regularly to make sure that the mix is balanced and smells rich and earthy. They are learning about the importance of limiting food waste in landfills, and about the impact that rotting food has upon the landfills and the Earth at large.

The emphasis of the lessons is the Enduring Understanding "We Are All Parts of the Whole".

Fourth Graders

The fourth graders have been studying the different forces that cause erosion. They then spent time in the habitat identifying areas that are affected by erosive forces. The students located the areas and then explored the causes of the damage. They have also researched methods and techniques to fix the problems in order to bring the habitat back to its natural state. Finally the fourth graders have been trying some of the methods out in the habitat. Mulching, water drains, seeding and the use of erosion blankets have all been used and are now being studied for their effectiveness.

Fifth and Sixth Graders

The students have just finished completely rebuilding the north entrance trail to the Habitat. Since we had the sun and temperatures on our side, we got the entire trail rebuilt (Not bad for ~8 40 min. sessions!). The students now have a much better idea of how to manage tools, work in teams, and apply critical thinking about the basics of building a trail. We will be inside for the next few months designing and preparing for our next phase of building a trail around the pond. We will also be digging into the larger issues of:

How do plant/animal systems interact with humans?
How does making a path for humans affect biodiversity?
How are we helping the community by building trails?
What is a legacy?
How do we affect others when we do community service?