More Zoo Snooze pics ...

From a fabulous photographer parent!

What a wonderful experience!  The students wrote about it today - here were some of their comments:

"We played light tag and I ninja'd the game!"
"It was fun x 3,000 which equals EPIC."
"I liked the part where we saw the Polar Bear. The other class made it run up to the glass."
"At the zoo snooze my class and I stayed up really late."
"We went to the zoo and slept at the sharl tank but we got up at 6:00 and I was really grumpy."
"I liked the Sting Rays. They felt smooth and slimy,"
"I liked the apes. I thought they were awesome."
"Next year I would like a mattress for the zoo snooze."
"We went to the Point Defiance Zoo for the zoo snooze. We had the whole place to ourselves."
"The zoo snooze blew my mind. I woke up with a fish nose in my face."

Yup, that about says it all!

Zoo Snooze at Point Defiance

Not a lot of snoozing actually happened at our sleepover with the sharks at the Point Defiance Zoo. What a great way to top off our studies of animals and their ecosystems! Highlights of the event included 

touching the stingrays, 

a night-time tour of the zoo, 

a stained-glass art craft and a midnight (almost) snack.

Oh, and "sleeping" with the sharks, of course!

Rocks rock!

Our latest science unit has focused on rocks -- the layers of the earth, the types of rocks (igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic), rock properties and how they are used. We have made rock candy (we've been observing the crystals forming and writing our observations in our science notebooks), eaten rock goodies and cookies representing each type of rock (thanks Navigators!), acted as rock detectives  -- identifying mystery rocks by making observations and answering questions such as: Does it float? Is it magnetic? What is the sheen or texture? What is the level of hardness as identified on the Moh's hardness scale?
     Last week, we studied some crystal shapes and folded our own 3-dimensional models of them, cracked open our own geodes, and excavated tiny garnets from some Mica Schist formed and found in the north Georgia mountains. The week before that we visited Jerry's Rock and Gem shop in Kent and learned a bit more about rocks from the geologist that owns the shop, and brought home a few treasures of our own. What  bunch of rock hounds we've become!

We have also been singing and dancing to this fun rock song:

World's Cutest Sharks

Preparing for our "Zoo Snooze," we learned a bit about sharks and made our own out of cardboard tubes:

Aren't they darling? Especially compared to the real deal!