4th Grade Water Lesson

In the Great Lake State, we are surrounded by opportunities to use water for more than just drinking and pleasure. Water is a great natural resource for creating energy, jobs, and even entire communities. Watch as one of our 4th grade classrooms explore water and the environmental economic impact it has on our community.


Fourth Grade Water Lesson from Anthony Gettig on Vimeo.

Busy Week!

Indeed, it was a busy week at Garden Camp. There were so many things to learn and do. Meanwhile, some of our grown-up leaders had meetings too. Everyone had something to do, that's for sure!

One of our field trips this week was to Portage Creek to test the water quality. We were volunteer scientists for a day! Here is a video that shows what we did.



After testing the water quality, we walked over to Kik Pool for some fun in the water there. We also visited a local park and lake for swimming this week. Clean water is very important for drinking, cooking, watering gardens, and for our enjoyment (like swimming) as well. One thing we really learned this week was how important the water cycle is and that we can have a positive impact on it.

Next week is the last week of Garden Camp. Keep checking this blog to see how we wrap things up!

Water and Peppers

Today was unlike any other day at Garden Camp. Miss Smith was stranded and could not make it to school, Mr. Johnson had a meeting and he had to leave early, so Mr. Gettig took over for Mr. Johnson with the help of one of his daughters! (She took all of the pictures for today.)

We started with breakfast and journaling time. Today we learned about water and the water cycle. Mr. Johnson explained how water goes from earth to the sky as clouds. We also watched a little bit of a video about the water cycle from Mr. Gettig's computer. We learned about evaporation, condensation, and water quality. Mr. Johnson demonstrated this by making a cloud in a jar. Here is a video of it.



Part of our lesson was learning about water quality. Mr. Johnson showed us that the quality of water can be measured by looking at what kind of things live in the water. Some bugs can live in dirty water while some are much more sensitive. Tomorrow, we will be measuring the quality of water in a nearby creek and report our findings to the scientists that track that stuff. We get to be volunteer scientists for a day! To practice, we were each given a sheet with a list of bugs found in a pretend river. We looked at the bugs, identified them, and wrote our findings on a water quality data form. Then we calculated the water quality for our pretend rivers. We are ready for the creek tomorrow!

After the lesson on water, it was time for Mr. Johnson to go to his meeting. Mr. Gettig took us outside and we pulled weeds for awhile. The rain over the weekend made them grow fast! Our vegetables are growing good too, especially the peppers. We were able to pick some of them! Here are pictures of our first pepper harvest.

We didn't know it, but Mr. Johnson and Mr. Gettig were busy last Friday building. We went and looked at the new gardening boxes near the playground. They are made from really strong materials and look cool! We lined them with landscape lining and put a layer of dead leaves on top of that. We will be adding soil and planting more very soon.

After lunch and free time, we read, wrote in our journals, worked on our picture book, and listened as Mr. Gettig read out loud to us. Tomorrow, we are going to be volunteer scientists and take a special field trip. Check back for pictures!

Day 1 - Here we are!

It was a great start to Garden Camp 2008 at Edison today!

We started with introductions, then got right into it. First, we journaled and asked ourselves these questions: What do all plants have? What do all plants need? How do we use plants? There are many different answers and we wrote about them in our journals.

After a quick snack, Mr. Johnson reviewed how to water plants, pull weeds, handle tools, how to plant, and handed out gloves for us to use. Then we went outside and planted peppers and tomatoes.

Part of Garden Camp will include serving our community. Together, we wrote a letter that we will give to our neighbors near Edison asking if we can be of service to them and help keep their garden and yard looking as good as ours. It is good citizenship to be of service to our neighbors.

After lunch, we toured the school grounds looking for different kinds of plants that grow right in our own yard. We took samples of these and brought them back to our classroom to organize them. There were big, small, skinny, wide, and many other ways to categorize them. We put them on large sheets of paper so that we can study them further and better organize them.

One of things we need to do twice a day is water the plants that we are growing. We have some things growing in the greenhouse, but some things are outside too. We all get the opportunity to water, weed, and care for the things we are growing.

We wrapped up the day with silent reading, learning about the different parts of a plant, and listening to Miss Smith read to us. Overall, it was a great first day of Garden Camp at Edison Environmental Science Academy!