ingridscience

Set up activities as stations or for the whole class to work on.

Introduction and focus
Animals need to 1. find food, and 2. run away and hide from other animals that want to eat them.
Animal 'adaptations', or their features help them do this so that they can stay alive.

Activity descriptions:

In a circle, carefully pass around prey and predator skulls, looking at the shape of the teeth, then the placement of the eyes, and for how they help an animal find food, and escape being eaten.

Model different ways that animals eat with animal eating styles activity (grabbing, stabbing, sucking, sieving).
Review the different tools that students tried with images of animals eating in the different ways.

Find camouflaged animals in photos. Camouflage helps animals hide from predators, as well as hiding to get closer to prey.

Some animals don't have legs. They have wings (like a bird) or fins (like a fish).
Build fins and wings onto playdough bodies to create your own winged/finned animal.
Look at a sheet of birds and fish drawings for real examples and ideas.

Build a skeleton of a deer or look at a snake skeleton. Compare how the skeleton is different from ours, and how each of our skeletons help us survive.

Look at barnacles feeding - they don't have legs and they can't move, but they have their own adaptations to eat and survive.

Look at pictures of different animal eyes - so many shapes and colours, but all for seeing surroundings, finding food and avoiding predators.
e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Animal-Eyes.jpg (but no labels!)

Activity sequence idea 1:
Scale model of Sun/Earth/Moon
Visualise a complete rotation of the Moon around the Earth, through the seasons.
Seasons model demo
Phases of the Moon activity

Activity sequence idea 2:
Scale model of Sun/Earth/Moon
Model how the Moon causes tides as its gravity pulls on the oceans.
Show barnacles feeding as they are submerged by water, as when the tide comes in.

Activity sequence 3:
Leaves turn colours before they drop from trees in the Fall. What colours do we see?
One of these colours is in leaves all year but is hidden until the green disappears in the Fall.
We’ll use a technique to separate out the colours in leaves, so we can find the hidden colour.
Set up leaf colours.
Move to a dark area in the school (gym with no windows/basement/behind curtains on a stage).
Demonstrate why we get seasons.
Because the Earth is tilted, the amount of sunlight reaching Canada in the Northern hemisphere changes through the year. In the summer we are tilted towards the sun, in the winter we are tilted away. (The Southern hemisphere is the opposite, so has summer and winter at opposite times of year from us.)
Model why the Moon looks different at different times of the month with Phases of the Moon activity.
Leaf colours revisit and discussion.
Green leaves have green and yellow pigments in them.
In the summer leaves are green. They also contain yellow pigment but it is masked by the green.
In the fall, as the leaf starts to die in preparation for falling off, the green pigment breaks down and loses its colour. The yellow colour then becomes visible. So some fall leaves turn yellow. (The red colour of other Fall leaves are by a different mechanism.)

One way that animals adapt for the winter is making a new coat of thicker feathers or fur, to keep them warm in the colder months.
Some animals also change the colour of their fur/feather colours between summer and winter, so that they are better camouflaged in each season. Look at photos e.g. ptarmigan birds in summer and winter.

Indigenous groups, such as the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, who’s land we are on, have a traditional ‘Seasonal Round’, to harvest food and make tools when each food/material becomes abundant in each season.
Optionally use this poster: https://www.vashonheritagemuseum.org/shop/p/coast-salish-seasonal-round…

Challenge students to separate a mixture of materials using various tools.
Name the methods they used, and give real life (including some industrial) examples, and Indigenous uses of separating materials for harvesting food.

Model a clam basket separating clams from sand.

Learn how to twine, an Indigenous weaving method for making clam baskets (and other woven tools and clothing).

Indigenous people that live here, and have done for thousands of years, have a respectful relationship with the animals they catch for food, including thanking an animal for giving their life to feed people.

Acknowledge that we are on Indigenous land.
In Vancouver, we live, work and play on the unceded land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Choose a selection of the activities.

Assemble the deer skeleton. Talk about how it may have died. Its body is used by, and help sustains, many other living things: animals gnaw the meat from the bones, bacteria and fungi decompose the meat and bones to valuable nutrients which leech into the soil, and are then used by plants to grow.
Humans can use many parts of an animal that they kill, and Pacific Northwest Indigenous groups make it a point to thank the animal for its life and to use every part of its body. Hooves and bones used to make tools, knife handles, spoons, arrowheads and fish hooks. Sinews (tendons/ligaments) for bow strings, fishing lines, thread.

We are eating sustainably when we only eat what we need, and get food in a way that protects ecosystem diversity. Then we leave healthy environments and food sources for the generations after us.
We will model two Coast Salish harvesting methods, both sustainable.
Set up stations of two sustainable food harvesting methods:
Clam baskets - harvesting by hand means that the clam beds are not overused
Fish traps - once enough fish for eating are caught, the remaining ones can be released

Look at the seasonal round poster (if available).
Show the basket weaving and clam fishing in the Winter. Show pics of real clam baskets.
In the Summer, fish are plentiful and the sockeye salmon are running. Fish are dried and smoked to eat in the winter.
In the Fall, large game such as deer are caught (for meat and for making leather goods among many other uses.

Show a version of the Pin and ring game made from animal bones.
Then students can try their own games made from recycled materials (cardboard tubes and chopsticks).

Carbon cycles through living things, the atmosphere, the oceans, the Earth and rocks:
Carbon moves between the air and animals/plants in Fast carbon cycles (respiration, photosynthesis and fermentation).
Carbon moves between the air and ocean water in a Fast carbon cycle.
Carbon moves into animal shells and rocks, and through the rock cycle in Slow carbon cycles.
Carbon is returned to the atmosphere through weathering in a Slow carbon cycle.
Carbon is returned to the atmosphere in large amounts via outgassing of volcanoes.

Humans are putting carbon into the atmosphere at a fast rate by burning fossil fuels.
Sometimes rocks form from plants and animals to make fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas.
We burn fossil fuels for energy.
Demonstrate burning fossil fuels using a candle (wax is a petroleum product).
Burning fossil fuels puts carbon dioxide into the air very fast, faster than it can cycle back into living things and rocks.
We need to stop burning fossil fuels for energy and use renewable sources only.

Wind energy is renewable.
Students make a device that turns in the wind, and learn about the key parts of a wind turbine (a part that spins and blades to catch the wind).
Wind turbines are hooked to a generator, to make electricity.
Demonstrate a wind turbine.
Wind turbine videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQpbTTGe_gk (2.5 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy9nj94xvKA (5 mins)