Connections

From the moment we fill our lungs with air for our first new born wail, we are constantly interacting with the world around us. As gentle as a breeze sifting pollen from a flower, as violent as a predator-prey battle, as dramatic as a thunderstorm, or as far-reaching as the jolt of light beams on molecules of chloro­phyll, interactions define the condition of life on our planet. 

This unit introduces students to the year’s in-depth investiga­tions of these dynamic cycles and connections. Using fourth graders’ curiosity about how the natural world works, the lessons that follow challenge students to discover the give and take that links the living and physical worlds. Throughout the year, students will develop new skills in relating and organizing information that will help them understand the connections they discover. The year is filled with hands-on experiences and experiments that explore how organisms rely on each other and the physical environment for food, nutrients, water, shelter, and room to grow and reproduce. With this concrete underpinning, students can better understand what happens when the food webs and water, nutrients, and other cycles that sustain a habitat are disrupted. They are also encouraged to take part in a year-long Endangered Species Project so that they can use their new understanding to help preserve a threatened species. 

Of course, much of the fun of discovery comes from working together and communicating with other people. Science relies on cooperation, and many of the activities in this first unit are cooperative games or projects that involve interactions among classmates. Encouraging the development of cooperative skills will help students realize how people depend on each other, as well as facilitate classroom management and enhance students’ joy in learning.

Iv- Song: “Take the Time to Wonder” 

1- Introduction 

2- Student Goals

3- Activity Chart 

4- Unit Planner

6- Recommended Literature 

8- Parent Letter 

9- Garden Links (identifying interactions) 

13- All Tied Up In Knots (using communication for problem solving) 

16- Unlikely Pairs (exploring physical properties) 

19- Discovery Center: Acting Together ( investigating physical forces)

23- Habitat Hike (observing interactions in a micro habitat)

27- All My Relations (observing interactions over time)

31- Garden Picture Web (illustrating interactions)

34- Endangered Species Project (researching endangered species) 

36- Assessment Checklist 

Student Lab Book Section

Lab Sheets

40- Calendar 

Pre Assessment: What Do You Know

41- About Interactions? 

43- All Tied Up In Knots

44- Unlikely Pairs

45- Acting Together

47- Garden Picture Web

48- Post Assessment:Making the Connections 

49- Field Log 

1- Magic Spot 

2- Reflections from a Naturalist’s Field Log

3- Observation Page 

4- Garden Links 

5- Habitat Hike 

7- All My Relations 

53- Life Lab Beat 

57- Index 

A habitat is more than the sum of its parts. In the habitat of a child’s neighborhood, a casual passerby does not see the secret hiding places, the neighbors good for a cookie or chat, the nice and mean dogs, the hills that defeat a bicycle, the hangouts and houses of friends and relatives, and all the other links that embroider a child’s life within a community. 

In much the same way, natural habitats are a tapestry of nooks and crannies that are home and sustenance to birds, insects, mammals, mosses, fungi, worms, crustaceans, mollusks, flower­ing plants, bacteria, millipedes, centipedes, reptiles, and more. Cut down a tree or strip away topsoil and the homes and livelihoods of many organisms are lost. Not so obvious are the structural changes to the web of interactions among plants and animals and the changes in physical relationships-water flow, moisture, light, soil particles, and the other conditions that define a habitat and what lives there. 

Many students will know that a habitat is a home that provides food, water, shelter and living space for a plant or animal. In this unit, students expand on their knowledge, exploring how plants and animals interact with their habitat to meet their survival needs and respond to the habitat’s physical challenges.

Tying these investiga­tions to the Endangered Species Project will personally connect students to the plants, animals, and landscape of a habitat and weave their lives into the fate of a larger neighbor­hood.

Iv. Song: “Everything Needs a Home” 

1- Introduction 

2- Student Goals 

3- Activity Chart 

4- Unit Planner

6- Recommended Literature

8- Parent Letter

9- Look Lively (examining habitats)

Discovery Center: Habitat Riddles

13- creating plants and animals

17- Growing Conditions (experimenting with variables affecting plant growth)

23- Mystery Habitats (investigating microhabitats)

26- Worm Race (experimenting with worms to infer habitat needs)

29- Clean Sweep (observing habitat changes)

33- Living Dangerously (role playing habitat resources and population needs)

37- Homing In (creating habitat brochures for garden animals)

40- Endangered Species Project (selecting an endangered species for year-long study)

43- Assessment Checklist

Student Lab Book Section Lab Sheets

46- Calendar

47- Pre assessment: What Do You Know About Habitats?

48- Growing Conditions

53- Plant Labels

54- Mystery Habitats

55- Habitats and Microhabitats

56- Worm Race

59- Post assessment: Making the Connections

61- Field Log

1- Reflections from a Naturalist’s Field Long

2- Look Lively

5- Clean Sweep

65- Life Lab Beat: Focus on Habitats

69- Index

All living things depend on water. It is a key component of all habitats and can often be the limiting factor that determines what can live in an area. Plants and animals that survive in a dry habitat have adapted protective devices to conserve water: a cactus has thick waxy leaves to minimize transpiration; a camel can go a few days without water to drink. 

Water is the natural world’s magician; it is always present but wears different costumes, one of which is a cloak of invisibility. Water is the only substance on earth to exist as a solid, liquid, and gas at ambient temperatures. As a liquid, it is a major com­ponent of all Planet Earth: It is the chief constituent of cells, covers three-quarters of the world’s surface, and is home to most of the world’s lifeforms. As a solid, it is a reservoir: Fresh water is stored in ice caps, glaciers, and snow cover. As a gas, it disappears: Water becomes a vapor and is purified in the process; to concrete learners, this is the hardest disguise to pen­etrate. The activities and extensions in this unit give students many opportunities to explore all states of water in hands-on investigations that take students’ own experiences as a starting point. 

The study of water is ideal for expanding the garden’s Living Laboratory to include the physical and earth sciences. The inter­actions of the water cycle also offer excellent data-collecting activities because students can easily control and measure vari­ables such as temperature and water amounts at the start and finish of an experiment.

Teacher Resource Section

Iv- Song: “Water Cycle Boogie”

1- Introduction

2- Student Goals

3- Activity Chart

4- Unit Planner

5- Recommended Literature

8- Parent Letter

9- Water Hunt (finding and tracing water sources)

12- Discovery Center: Water Puzzle (exploring evaporation and condensation)

16- Small Worlds ( creating and monitoring open and closed terrariums)

20- Invisible Water (experimenting with hygrometers)

24- Leaf Water (experimenting with transpiration)

29- Sticky Water (experimenting with properties of cohesion and adhesion)

32- Upward Bound (experimenting with water flow in plants)

35- Water-Go-Round (role playing the life of a water drop)

38- Endangered Species Project (researching how adopted species use water)

41- Assessment Checklist

Student Lab Book Section Lab Sheets 

44- Calendar

45- Preassessment: What Do You Know About Water?

47- Water Puzzle

52- Small Worlds

56- Invisible Water

59- Moist Air Meter

63-Sticky Water

71-Upward Bound

74- Postassessment: Making the Connections

75- Field Log

1- Reflections from a Naturalist’s Field Log

2- Water Hunt

4- Leaf Water

6- Observation Page

79- Life Lab Beat: Focus On Water

83- Index

Put your ear up close to a well-fed tummy and take in the com­fortable rumbles of a meal in its final stages of digestion. From the minute it enters your mouth, your meal is smashed, mashed, liquefied, acidified, and enzymatically chopped into molecular bits that your body will use as energy or as building blocks to make more of you. The leftovers provide a feast for the gut bacteria that do the final processing before returning the remains of your meal to the earth. 

Now run your hand through rich, organic soil and feel a plant’s digestive system. While our bodies surround and include our digestive system, plants are separate from but literally immersed in a key part of theirs-the soil. The cycles and inter­actions by which rock is weathered into soil and dead matter is broken down into molecules are much like the process by which we digest the food we get, directly or indirectly, from plants. Plants use the sun’s energy to make food-sugars, starches, and oils-but they rely on the soil to provide them with the minerals and nutrients they need for a well-balanced diet. In turn, we rely on plants for our nutrients-minerals, the amino acids that make up proteins, and most vitamins. 

This unit explores the interactions that connect human and plant nutrition. You and your students are in for an unusual feast as you use students’ favorite foods to investigate the interactions that transform waste products into new organisms. The Field Log pages provide extension activities for interested groups of students.

iv- Song: “Decomposition”

1- Introduction 

2- Student Goals 

3- Activity Chart 

4- Unit Planner 

6- Recommended Literature 

8- Parent Letter 

9- Breakdown! (exploring decomposition)

12- Discovery Center: Label It! (categorizing nutrients) 

16- Rot-A-Rama I (experimenting with compost)

20- Moldy Oldies (relating decomposition to the recycling of nutrients) 

24- Uptake (investigating the transport of nutrients)

28- Rot-a-Rama II (analyzing compost to understand factors influencing decomposition.)

31- See Vitamin C (experimenting with VitaminC ) 

34- Snack-a-Thon (tracing sources of nutrients) 

37- Endangered Species Project (developing an information packet) 

39- Assessment Checklist Student Lab Book Section Lab Sheets

42- Calendar Preassessment: What Do You Know

43- About Nutrients? 

45- Breakdown! 

51- Discovery Center: Label It! 

53- Rot-a-Rama I

56- Moldy Oldies 

59- Uptake 

62- Rot-a-Rama II 

64- See Vitamin C 

68- Postassessment: Making the Connections

69- Field Log 

1- Reflections from a Naturalist’s Field Log 

2- Who’s For Dinner?

4- The Soil Makers

6- Decomposers are Our Friends

7- Decomposers I Have Known 

8- Garbage 

73- Life Lab Beat: Focus on Nutrients 

77- Index 

Food webs exemplify the interconnections within habitats. These feeding relationships are the mechanisms by which the sun’s energy is transferred from green plants to plant eaters to the ani­mals that prey on them and on each other. All of these energy transfer mechanisms use energy themselves. Only about 1 per­cent of the light that falls on a plant is used in photosynthesis to create the carbohydrates that start the food chain. Animals that eat the plants use only about 10 percent of the energy stored within the plant to sustain them; the rest is used to fuel the animal’s activities and body maintenance and is given off as heat. If you treat yourself to some aerobic exercise, you will feel the heat generated as your food energy is burned. All that heat even­tually radiates back into space and is not available to energize any stray predator you may encounter. While energy is not recy­cled, the elements that make up each organism are, thanks to decomposers, which break down complex molecules into miner­als plants can use to restart the chain of life. 

In previous units, students have investigated two major parts of food webs: the decomposition that takes place as part of the nutri­ent cycle (Nutrient Interactions unit) and the energy source of pho­tosynthesis (Light Interactions unit). In this unit, students integrate concepts investigated earlier as they review simple food chains before moving on to food webs, the richer, more complex interac­tions that are involved when animals have several food sources.

Teacher Resource Section

Iv- Song: “We’re Animals”

1- Introduction 

2- Student Goals 

3- Activity Chart 

4- Unit Planner

6- Recommended Literature 

8- Parent Letter 

9- Keep Me Running (demonstrating how food

Provides energy) 

12- Food Chain (investigating favorite foods) 

16- Sun Food (investigating how plants make food) 

21- What’s for Dinner? (exploring animals’ adaptations for eating) 

25- Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

(experimenting with decomposition)

29- Animal Detective (identifying food webs of

Garden animals) 

33- Pass It Up the Line ( investigating toxins in food chains)

37- Tied Together (creating a food web) 

40- Endangered Species Project (investigating

food webs of endangered species)

42- Assessment Checklist 

Student Lab Book Section

Lab Sheets

46- Calendar 

Preassessment: What Do You Know

47- About Food Webs? 

49- Energy Arrows 

50- Food Chain 

51- Sun Food 

54- What’s For Dinner? 

57- Help Us Find Our Teeth 

62- Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

65- Animal Detective 

66- Pass It Up The Line 

68- Postassessment Making the Connections 

71- Field Log 

1- Reflections from a Naturalist’s Field Log 

2- Animal Detective

7- Mushroom Spore Print 

75- Life Lab Beat: Focus on Food Webs 

79- Index

“No man is an island entire of itself,” wrote the poet John Donne in 1624. He might just as well have been writing about ecosystems, the webs linking living things with each other and their environment. Every organism within an ecosystem depends on every other living and non living thing: a change to one affects all. 

This year started with the exploration of habitats. A habitat is the place-the home, the physical structure-where a plant or animal lives. As the year continued, students explored some of the key interactions that take place in a habitat: water and nutri­ents cycles, light, and food webs. In the coming weeks, students will work at organizing what they have learned in the previous units as they explore how all of these factors interact in an ecosystem. Ecosystem thus becomes the unifying concept that explores the interactions of living organisms with each other and with their non living environment. When you think of the great ecosystems of the world, rain forests, deserts, oceans, and prairies may come to mind. In this unit students will have the opportunity to investigate the systems and interactions in these locations, as well as in their own schoolyard. 

By using the garden’s Living Laboratory as a model of how ecosystems work, students come to understand that no piece of earth is divorced from the rest of the world: sunlight, water, and gases enter the system, plants and animals come and go, and associations form and disintegrate, linking each ecosystem to the biosphere, our planet’s life zone. This unit, too, is built on mutual reliance and cooperative learning. In these activities, students work together to find and share information, create ecosystem dioramas, solve problems, and make decisions. You will also find many ideas for weaving your Endangered Species Project into these activities.

Teacher Resource Section

Iv- Song: “Ecology”

1- Introduction 

2- Student Goals

3- Activity Chart 

4- Unit Planner 

6- Recommended Literature 

8- Parent Letter 

9- Working Together (examining simple systems) 

12- Whacky Systems (inventing a system) 

15- Garden Connections (analyzing inputs into a garden bed) 

20- Setting Boundaries (observing and Diagraming a garden system) 

23- One Bit of Ground (creating dioramas of ecosystems)

27- Carrying On (exploring interactions in food pyramids) 

32- Picture a World (creating a seed packet) 

Endangered Species Project ( creating an endangered species news show) 

37- Assessment Checklist Student Lab Book Section Lab Sheets

40- Calendar Preassessment: What Do You Know

41- About Systems?

42- Working Together 

43- Whacky Systems 

45- Garden Connections

52- Ecosystem Readings

60- One Bit of Ground 

63- Carrying On 

66- Picture A World 

67- Postassessment Making the Connections 

69- Field Log

1- Reflections from a Naturalist’s Field Log

2- Setting Boundaries 

4- Endangered Ecosystem 

6- Cactus 

7- Tropical House? 

8- Square Meter Ecosystem 

73- Life Lab Beat: Focus On Ecosystems 

78- Index

Over the past year, your students have looked at many of the connections that bind plants and animals to each other and to their habitats. They have explored how organisms use water, nutrients, and light and how these factors help to determine what lives where. They have investigated how parts work together to make up a whole system, and they have applied their explorations to looking at how food webs and nutrient and water cycles build an ecosystem’s self-sustaining web of relationships. Now they take the next step and explore how humans can work at sustaining living systems. Sustaining any living thing involves sharing responsibility for and being aware of how individuals fit into a network of relationships. In this unit, students take responsibility for monitoring and assessing the projects they initiate. Of course, the end of the year is a busy time for everyone. Some of this unit activities will help prepare the garden for the summer. Instead of trying to schedule and complete all of the activities, you may want to choose either Mulch It Up or Critters Alive as a stewardship project, or consider having half the class do one activity and the other half do the other. Either the Endangered Species Play or Passing the Torch will provide a rousing end to a challenging year of learning about the world around us. Whichever way you choose to organize this unit, it will provide an opportunity to assess and reflect upon the interactions that each of us depend upon. As students apply their knowledge, challenge them to communicate the science concepts they are using. 

Iv- Song: “Nature Rap”

1- Introduction 

2- Student Goals

3- Activity Chart 

4- Unit Planner 

6- Recommended Literature 

8- Parent Letter 

9- Gardens Forever! ( identifying systems in the garden) 

12- Garden Managers ( creating a sustainable Garden plan) 

16- Mulch It Up (examining properties of mulch)

20- Critters Alive (controlling garden pests) 

24- New Neighbors (creating a multiple use management plan) 

27- Endangered Species Play (producing an Original play) 

30- Passing the Torch (compiling an

endangered species big book) 

33- Endangered Species Project (creating an

endangered species awareness day)

35- Assessment Checklist

Student Lab Book Section

Lab Sheets

38- Calendar 

Preassessment: What Do You Know

39- About Sustainable Systems?

41- Gardens Forever! 

42- Garden Managers 

45- Critters Alive

49- New Neighbors 

53- Endangered Species Play 

56- Postassessment Making the Connections 

57- The Green Heart Award 

58- We Pass the Torch 

59- Moisture Meter 

61- Field Log 

1- Reflections from a Naturalist’s Field Log 

2- Garden Managers in the Field 

3- Mulch It Up

6- Critters Alive in the Field 

8- Midsummer Daydream 

65- Life Lab Beat: Focus on Sustainable Systems