Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Animals in Winter: Part 1


We made animal tracks today with plaster of paris. (2 parts plaster to one part water) Using recyclable plastic food containers (take out containers) works well and gives kids each their own space to work in. It will probably take about 30-40 minutes for the plaster to dry. I recommend leaving the molds in there as it hardens, but it really depends on the type of molds you have and your experience with plaster of paris. When I did my trial runs, the shape of the prints were not holding well at all unless I left the mold in during the most of the drying time. The molds we had were rubber, they were very easy to pull out even once completely dry.

We discussed different animal tracks and what these animals tend to do to prepare for winter

1. Hibernate
2. Adapt- forage, grow a second coat
3. Migrate

We also read a book about bear hibernation called "Bear Snores On" by Karma Wilson

Tomorrow we will do step 2 of the animals prints- painting them like I did in the sample below, and some more activities to test our recognition of animals tracks.


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