Stimulating Science Simulations

Where to begin?  This has been an amazing trip!  My husbands sister and her family live in North Pole, Alaska.  We flew out here on July 6th and planned to stay for one week.  On the way to their house from the airport, we saw a moose crossing the road. They are HUGE! One of the first places we visited was the Alaskan Pipeline. The first three days we had beautiful weather and spent lots of time exploring the great outdoors of the Alaskan Interior.  They have two Rzrs (4 wheel ATVs) that were tons of fun for riding on the trails and playing in the big mud puddles. On one of our rides, we saw moose tracks and we even ran into some firefighters who were getting ready to make a cut line. Of course, I went into teacher mode and conducted an impromptu mini interview on the spot. Day three took a turn for the worse when our oldest son flipped a Rzr on its' side, resulting in a broken humerus and dislocated elbow. Two hours in surgery, two plates, and 8 scr...

It has rained every Friday in the past 3 weeks.  Finally, we got through a Friday morning without rain and my 3rd grade classes were able to go out to the garden.  We worked for about 80 minutes and cleared out most of the clover that was growing.  We had a terrible time clearing out runners from Bermuda grass last year but apparently we did a good job of it since there was very little to be found growing this year. Besides getting the garden mostly weed free, tons of learning took place.  The 3rd graders did a great job working carefully with their tools and clearing their patch of the garden.  They worked to spread the different types of soil that they found so there would be a healthy combination.  One area seemed to have more clay than the rest, so they worked to spread that around.