Week 4 Day 2 Gravity

We started with Gratitude Circle and a game of "Warm Wind Blows for Anyone Who..." (person in center has to say something true about themselves and anyone who it is also true for finds a new cone). I challenged them to think of something true having to do with gravity since this week is all about gravity. Then we discussed, “How do plants sense gravity to know which way is up in order to grow roots down and stems up?” We talked about statoliths (tiny dense grains of starch that fall inside a plant cell sending signals to let the plant know which way is “down” and which is “up”. Then we played Statolith Scramble (each plant cell which was everyone except taggers) had a sand timer (1 minute). The sand in the timer represented the grains of statoliths helping the plant cell know which way to grow (roots down and stem up). The plant cells have to survive (not get tagged) long enough for their statoliths to settle and inform them which way to grow their roots down and their stem up. After the game,  they made Statolith artwork (using bins to represent the statocyte cells and marbles as the statoliths). Then they took a snack break and went to the obstacle course. Next we explored how gravity affects weather on Earth (holding the atmosphere in place, which creates clouds, wind, lightning, tornadoes, rain, snow. Most weather that we experience and know wouldn’t exist without gravity). Then we did an imaginary Atmospheric Ascent to learn the qualities of each layer of the atmosphere. Next we explored how trees get water to their top branches (through root pressure, capillary action and transpiration pull). And we set up a transpiration experiment to observe the process of water evaporating from plants leaves. We will be comparing the amount of water collected from a few leaves vs. many and in sunlight vs. shade. Then they played “Transpiration Chain” (in 3 teams the explorers moved water as quickly as they could from the “roots” through the “stem” and out the “leaves” into a cup with a goal line). During lunch, they added onto their original play and then we hiked to the creek to play with clay, explore and cool off.