Pennock Rotates through Rendezvous!
Pennock Elementary has a yearly rendezvous around the holidays, and SOLE staff and partners led rotating programs for their fourth grade students. What a fun way to spend the day before assessments! Emily from the SOLE team mined cookies with classes. Each kid traced a cookie on a piece of paper with a grid of natural resources, while resisting first instinct to gobble it down. Then students mined chocolate chips from their cookies with toothpicks! Some kids scraped the surface only, and some destroyed their cookie to find all possible chips. Emily and students together made the connection that mining effects (crumbs) spread to surrounding areas, and the land cannot be perfectly reclaimed, or recovered. Kids were pumped when finally allowed to scarf down their cookies.
In a room across the hall, Erin, Shalana, and two very special guests displayed Colorado ecosystems. Live animals exemplified inhabitants of the grasslands ecosystem. Erin reached into the cooler and revealed a bull snake, in the scales! One bull snake was small, female, and albino; the other was older, male, and had traditional coloration. Calm, awestruck students pet the larger bull snake with two gentle fingers! Neat!
Thrilled kids gathered in rows to discuss beavers and their homes with Katie. A brave volunteer from each class rose to dress-up as a beaver. As each astute student named an adaptation, Katie dressed the model with an item! Supportive classmates gawked and giggled at the sight of a human-sized beaver!
Next children felt the fur and tail of a surprisingly large, once-living beaver. When showing the beaver skull, Katie connected with Pennock students who dissected owl pellets that other small rodents would have the same large, front teeth!
With zipping, zopping, time-traveling watches, Steve from History Colorado guided students through Colorado’s past. He ignited kids’ imaginations with a huge map of Colorado, while they saw, felt, or smelled artifacts!
Thanks to our partner Steve at History Colorado and Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff for the interesting programs. Thank you for having us out to celebrate Rendezvous with you, Pennock Elementary teachers and students!
