SNAKE AWAKE
Creative Writing: Ask your class to write about a time that they have each seen a snake. If a student has never seen a snake, he or she may write a fictional piece. Students must clarify if their piece is fiction or non-fiction. Ask the students to describe what they saw and also what they felt.
Math/Science: When reptiles hibernate, they drop their heart rates very low to conserve energy. What are some of the things we do that take energy? Which activities take more energy than others?
During hibernation, garter snake's heart rates may drop by as much as 54%! Have your students take their pulse for one minute and record their heart rate in beats per minute. When they are done, have them figure out what 54% of their heart rate would be. That is how slowly their heart might beat if they were hibernating! This exercise can also be varried by having them lie still and take pulse or exercise and then take a pulse.
Vocabulary:
- Hibernation: when an animal survives cold temperatures and low food supplies by lowering its metabolic rate.
- Hibernaculum: a hole or den where snakes gather to spend the winter
- Metabolism: the speed at which energy is consumed. The faster the metabolism, the more food an animal must eat to stay healthy.
Key Concepts:
- Some animals survive the winter by hibernating.
- Not all animals can hibernate, only ones with the right adaptations can do so.
GRAZERS OF THE FIELD
Creative Writing Exercise:
Read your class a story about an animal that migrates. You can use the short story from this blog, or a favorite story of your own. When you finish, ask each student to write a 1-page story about what migration might look like from a goose's point of view. Ask them to consider what would help or hinder them on their journey.
Science Exercise:
What are the four basic needs of every animal? (Food,water, shelter, space). Ask your students to choose one of those needs and describe how it would or would not be met for a goose during migration.
ACTIVITY:
"Musical Migration"
Materials: (fpr 25 students) 75 popsicle sticks (energy), 7 coats or blankets (shelter), 8 bottles or dixie cups (water), 10 pictures of food (grasses, seeds, algea), 10 pictures of fields or wetlands (space), means of playing music (or bird calls)
1. This game operates much like "musical chairs." While music (or the bird calls) are playing the students migrate in a circle.
2. When the music stops you call out a danger the migrators migth face (i.e. snow storm, hot and dry weather, hunger, or fatigue). Each migrator must try to find the appropriate resource, but only one goose can use each item. The first one to touch it wins the right to use it. Any geese that are unable to find their resource must give up 1 energy stick.
3. Play the music and have the geese start migrating again. Stop it cad call out a new danger. When student runs completely out of popsicle sticks, he or she must sit down and does not successfully complete migration.
4. As geese sit down, begin removing resources so that they are harder and harder to find (you can compare this to leaving to late in the season, landscape changes due to human use, an unexpected storm, ect).
5. The final goose left is the winner.
6. After the game discuss what else might impact animal needs. This can be an opportunity to tie into concepts such as food chains (if there is a frost that kills off a lot of plants, what happens to the geese?), adaptations (why do most geese survive migration (they have strong wings, special lungs, and light bones to help them fly. They have down to keep them warm), or ecosystem relationships. (If many geese land in a field and eat all the grains, what does this mean for other birds who might stop there later or live there year round? Is this actually a problem, or do geese usually leave some edibkle plants behind when they leave?)
Math Exercise:
If it takes a goose one day to fly 600 miles (this is possible!), what is the average distance traveled by a goose in one hour?
Vocabulary:
- Migration: When animals travel a long distance for the sake of survival. Migration usually occurrs seasonally.
- Resource: Something needed for survival, commonly food, water, shelter, and space. Humans commonly refer to other living or non-living things they use to make items their as resources, such as wood, coal, or metals.
- All animals have certain needs that must be met for them to survive.
- When seasons change, animals must change their physiology (bodies) or behavior to continue to meet their needs.
- Migration is one way animals can continue to meet their needs as the season changes, but it is a costly method in terms of energy use.
- (pre-k): Life Science-living things have characteristics and basic needs. Earth Science-seasons have patterns.
- (k): Life Science- Living things can be described and sorted by their phyical characteristics.
- (1st): Life Science- Living things have specific characteristics that help them survive.
- (2nd): Earth Science- Seasons impact the environment and living things.
- (4th): Life Science- There is interaction and interdependence among living and non-living components of a system.
