Week 36 - Fernhill Wetlands Field Trip
/We had a shortened week with no school on Monday and then a field trip to Fernhill Wetlands on Friday, but we squeezed in lots of fun activities while we were together.
In math, we continued our geometry lessons with a focus on perpendicular lines and parallel lines. We used street maps of Forest Grove to see examples of these different types of lines. We also enjoyed taking a walk around campus and using our digital cameras to take photos of different geometric lines and angles we saw around us. We found lots of examples of perpendicular lines, parallel lines, and right angles, as well as a few examples of acute and obtuse angles too.
Our wagon train has continued to travel along the Oregon Trail. We traveled through Wyoming and Idaho, and had to face our most challenging river crossing so far at Three Island Crossing. Some wagon families chose to hire a Native American guide to help their wagon navigate across the Snake River, while others chose to attempt the crossing on their own. A few wagons tipped over and lost some of their supplies. One wagon family was hit with scarlet fever and lost another child to the disease. A few other families have nearly run out of food several times, but they were able to survive by hunting as well as trading with other wagons for extra food supplies. At the end of the week, we reached Flagstaff Hill, where we could see across Oregon to the Cascade Mountain range in the distance. Our pioneer families are excited because we know that our final destination is just beyond those mountains!
The Sea Lions enjoyed a lovely field trip to Fernhill Wetlands on Friday morning. We turned ourselves into nature explorers and took our time traversing all around the wetlands. We made predictions about how many birds and other animals we would encounter, and then took tallies and notes of our observations as we walked around. We were surprised to find over 100 total birds…far beyond our predicted tallies! We also used our digital cameras to practice nature photography as we explored another area of the wetlands. This week we’ll each be creating digital collages and presentations with the photos we took to share with the class. Some favorite animals the Sea Lions observed were a great blue heron wading close by, several nutria swimming, and a large bird of prey flying overhead (we weren’t able to determine the species, unfortunately).
