Nature Detectives Day 3

After Gratitude Circle, we played "Timed Circuit" (one kid was the "light bulb" with a hat, one was the "battery" with a ball representing an electron and the rest were "wires" and they had a time limit to form a circuit and pass the electron from the battery through the light and back to the battery).

Next we discussed how animals and plants use electricity to survive. For example, echidnas have electroreceptors in their snouts to help them locate food.

Then we continued the adventure for the time machine. We found a code in Tom's journal and a page explaining how to decode his messages. The journal code led them to the woods near the obstacle course. They found pictures of trees and numbers on them. They also found a DaVinci lock and a small locked red box. After finding all 20 tree cards they used them to add certain trees together to get a number which correlated to a letter in the alphabet. The letters opened the DaVinci Lock which had a key and directions to open the little red box. The red box had 21 parts to a long coded message. We went back to the classroom and each explorer decoded their part of the message. It gave them a date and where to find the clock part of the time machine. 

After finding the clock, we had a snack break and went to the obstacle course. 

Then they painted the base and mechanism part of their automaton art/engineering project. 

Then we ate lunch, added more to the play and played the game "Why are you late?" for a bit. Then we went to the creek. At dismissal, there was volleyball four square, archery, baseball, basketball and some played "Why are you late" on their own.