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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Visual Vocabulary

This week we made visual vocabulary cards for our water cycle vocabulary. The purpose of a visual vocabulary card is to design it in a way which will help teach the meaning of the word. Your children picked either water cycle, evaporation, precipitation, or condensation. They then designed or decorated the word in way to help others understand the concept. Here are some of our examples:

Condensation in the form of clouds

Evaporation in the kitchen



Precipitation

Precipitation

Water cycle visual

Water cycle in the kitchen

Friday, April 5, 2013

The Sun's Energy

The sun is the source of all our energy. We learned when we discussed our natural resources that each one could be related to the sun somehow. In particular this week, we discussed how the sun plays a role in plant growth, the water cycle, and creating winds. The sun's role in the water cycle is pretty obvious to the kids - it powers evaporation, and without evaporation the whole water cycle shuts down. In regards to plant growth, the sun allows the plants to go through the process of photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, the plant converts light energy into chemical energy, or food. Finally, the sun heats the Earth's surface unevenly, leading to the creation of winds.

I gave the students a list of several words that would connect to each of the three roles of the sun. They were to make a diagram stemming from the sun, and decide where all the words fit best. Here is an example: