Exploring the Northwest Passage -- from our classroom?

A highlight of this week was a Skype interview with real-world modern explorer, Sean Meagher, captain of the super yacht Latitude, which navigated the Northwest Passage in 2014 and 2015 -- only the 162nd vessel in history to do so! We met Captain Meager through our guest teacher, Seabury parent Jen Parker, who used to sail and work with him in Cape Cod. (Thanks Ms. Jen!)

Captain Meager described the difficulties of navigating the ice and the definite indications he saw of melting from one year to the next -- including the story of one iceberg that got too warm too fast and actually exploded underwater - thankfully not close enough to their boat to cause any damage. He talked about how exciting it was to see Polar Bears in real life -- though they look cuddly and huggable, he said, you would NOT want to get close to one. He and the people on board the Latitude noticed that the polar bears are learning to hunt on land, and they looked very healthy. He showed us a picture of himself swimming with a humpback whale, and described the special drysuits the crew and passengers wore to keep warm in/around the water. He also told us about the frustration of waiting for a week at a remote northern town to refuel, and the relief of getting out just a few days before the place was frozen-in and they would have had to stay for weeks longer. 

The main reason for both voyages was to take photographs of the Arctic landscape, polar bears and walrus (the passengers included one National Geographic photographer - John Isaac -- more on him here: https://theliteratelens.com/2012/04/12/john-isaacs-untaken-photographs/ and some of his images here: john isaac photographer), but when asked why he would personally undertake a trip to such a cold, remote place, Captain Meagher's response was "because it is there."  Spoken like a true explorer! 

We watched part of this video beforehand about the expeditions, and it is worth taking a look at. The water, ice and landscape are lovely, and there are some beautiful pictures and footage of the animals they saw: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Qx8U6mu6A

This interview brought our study of exploration to life, and it really got students thinking about global warming and the demise of the arctic ice. Captan Meager urged the children to learn all they can about science and to research for themselves the reasons the ice may be disappearing. I think we might have inspired some future explorers and scientists here -- I hope so! 

Captain Meagher's next expedition will be a visit to the Antarctic -- he said we could join him next time for penguin pictures - we can't wait!

Live Theater, Creativity, and what Seabury Kids do on the Bus!

At Seabury, field trips are one of the main ways we are able to teach our students about the world.

Recently, we traveled through the wardrobe door to Narnia, once into Narnia created in our classrooms for a math adventure (see previous posts here and on the Navigators page), and once into the world of Narnia as brought to life at Seattle Children's Theater.

SCT's productions are always fantastic, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was no exception. We talked about how the characters looked or seemed different than they had in our imaginations while we were reading the book, and back at school, completed a Venn diagram on the ways in which the book and the play were the same and different.

We always enjoy having lunch at the Seattle Center after the play. We could not pass up the opportunity to pose with the Space Needle in the background!

My least favorite part of field trips is usually the bus ride. This one, however, WAS an exception. You can tell a Seabury kid, apparently, by what he/she does on the bus!

 This student started writing his review of the play as soon as we started back to school.

One student was creating brain games and surveying everyone: Is it easier to say the location of the word in the box (up, down, left, right) when it is written in the correct location?

 This student was creating secret codes.

This student drew a map of Narnia and labelled all the places she'd seen in the play. This was all BEFORE the Venn diagram comparison of book and play.

It seems that theater truly does inspire creativity, as this article, The Top Ten Reasons Why Theatre is Still Important in the Twenty-First Century, discusses: http://www.tcgcircle.org/2014/06/the-top-ten-reasons-why-theatre-is-still-important-in-the-twenty-first-century/

We are so lucky to be able to do field trips like this one on a monthly basis at Seabury. 

Another great day at the theater (and on the bus!)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Science on the Silk Road

We've been learning about Marco Polo and the Silk Road, so we did an early science investigation on this odd little thing:

What could it be, we wondered?

Thinking like scientists, using all our senses to observe and gather data, we NOTICED:

Then we THOUGHT about it. Did it have a tree or a bean inside?

Then we WONDERED:

After noticing, thinking, and wondering, we read a few books to see what we could find out. We were delighted to think that something that looked just like this once fell into the Empress' tea, and we quickly identified our object as a silk worm cocoon. We also decided we should try dropping ours into boiling water to see what would happen.

Just like in the book, the silk from the cocoon "unwound" and seemed to go on forever! Everyone had a chance to pull on it, and we did not even get it halfway unraveled.

We looked at the life cycle of a silk worm.

We were sad to learn the pupa dies in cocoons used to make silk, and a little grossed out to find one all dried out inside the cocoon. ("THAT'S what made the noise inside!")

Finally, we looked at some things made out of silk, noticing the luster and the softness.

            To think, this little oddity turns into beautiful material and scarves like this. Fascinating!

Narnia Math Adventure

We took a trip through the wardrobe and discovered Narnia in Mrs. Towne's classroom!  

We turned right at the lamp post and had tea at Mr. Tumnus's house.

We tried three different flavors of Turkish Delight.

  

We had to vote and graph our favorites. Hmmm... was rose, lemon or mint the best?

The scones and tea were also delicious!

 Aslan was there, too!

We marked our favorites on the board and discovered a lot about making a good graph.

When tea was over, we tried our hand at figuring our some Narnia-related word problems. Some of them required fractions ...

 and multiplication.

All of them required logical thinking.

  We also used a map legend to figure out some of the distances between things in Narnia.

How far from the lamp post to Mr. Tumnus' house? 18 miles.

After talking about lining up the bars in a bar graph and labeling the categories and information collected, we could easily see that lemon was the clear favorite. We even graphed second and third choices and got into some sophisticated discussions about how to interpret this data.

Magic and math! Or is it magical math?