Welcome Back Students! I hope you had a fun spring break. I spent the whole week in Point Reyes National Seashore, northwest of San Francisco with my extended family. If you ever have a chance to go there, I highly recommend a visit. There are beaches full of elephant seals and an elk reserve with 400 elk to view as you take a spectacular hike. We went Kayaking in the Tomales Bay and walked down 360 steps to learn about one of the oldest functioning light houses in the US. We flew a kite and played in the sand at Limantour beach with seals bobbing their heads in the surf nearby. At the Bear Valley Visitor center, we explored a replica village of the Miwok Indians who lived in the area 5,000 years ago. Nearby, we walked on the earthquake trail that goes exactly along the San Andreas fault and saw where a fence had jumped 16 feet during the great quake of 1906. We saw numerous birds, including pelicans, cormorants, egrets, herons, ravens, and an owl, and many that I need to look up as well. There were about twenty different types of wild flowers in bloom… which I also plan to look up. As we gazed out over Chimney rock, we spotted a young grey whale migrating northward. My favorite hike was called the Bolinas Ridge trail where we walked among some of the many dairy cows in the area and got up high in the open oak chaparral to see amazing views in all directions. It helped that it was sunny-ish all week. Next time I go, I want to do more kayaking and hiking and maybe mountain biking on some of the trails we didn’t get to and to see some of the harder to get to beaches.
OKAy back to science….Coming up this week, we will be starting to learn about simple machines, inclined planes, pulleys and levers. Next week we will have some special visitors to our class to help us build and test model wind turbines with our class. As part of the iPad project, we will be getting a class set of iPads to work with around April 15th at which time we will start a research project on renewable energy. Towards the end of the month we will be starting to review science topics from 6th, 7th and 8th grade in order to prepare for the OAKS test in science at the beginning of May. After that it’s on to our final work sample on electric cars and the the Solar Car unit culminating in the Solar Challenge being held at Cal Young on June 1st. So get ready for your last two months of middle school!
