Moved To The BLK Site

High: 8°C
Low : 3°C
Sunrise: 7:17
Sunset: 18:53
Hello Again - I just wanted to say I was so excited to talk with all of you on Monday. It was really hard to talk with you and not see you. I couldn’t see your reactions or how you enjoyed or didn’t enjoy what I was talking about. Let me know if you enjoyed the phone conference. I can share your answers about the conference with the Earthwatch people who made this possible. All of you that keep saying I need to come home, guess what, only one more day. I will be back for 3rd hour on Thursday. This trip went so fast, but sounds like it was forever for some of you. It has been an exciting trip. I have met people from all around the United States. Just learning about what they teach and how their schools run has been an experience. I want to thank the School District of Cudahy for letting me experience this and to share it with my students. Ok, on to more fun things in the arctic. While we were in Churchill we observed an artistic figure called a Inukshuk. Look up this word and tell me what they are. They are really cool and while we were in Churchill we saw a few of them. We were able to see some more wildlife today. We saw the ptarmigan. This bird is really neat to see flying though the woods. I was unable to take a picture of it, but look it up and read about the adaptations this bird makes. We continued our study of the forest and the different vegetation that grows there. We did move to a new location today. We were able to finish the site we were working on and now moved to a site they call BLK. At the BLK site we noticed there are many more black spruce then we have seen at the last site. We were also able to see the Larch tree. This is an interesting tree because it is a deciduous conifer tree. What was so different was that the larch tree was all over the BLK site, but while we were at the old site there were very few. The larch tree is the tree that I showed you on the video conference today. So, today we were able to collect 50 seedlings and 50 saplings from the forest tundra. Once we collect them we brought them back to the lab and do a few more studies. One of the studies is to count the whorls. The picture is of some of my team members counting the whorls and entering the data into the computer. Another thing we need to do once back at the lab is to remove the cores from the trees we collected. We put the tree cores on a piece of wood and let them dry. In one of my previous posts I explained how we do this already, but wanted to put a picture of the boards on this blog. Finally I want you students to start to think about a "project". Now that you have seen what I am doing in the arctic, I want you to think about what we could do in Cudahy to help improve the schools or the community. I want you to think about problems or concerns you have about the environment or areas around the community that we may be able to help or study. When I get back I want to discuss different options and come up with a plan of action. Cudahy Students: 1. Define the bold letter words. 2. Look up Inukshuk (Inuksuk) and find out other places in the world that have them. 3. Tell me adaptations that the ptarmigan makes. 4. In your journal come up with some ideas that we could do as a project to help out in our community or school district.