June 23, 2025

Is The Desert Hot?

Marvelous Monday to everyone!

Today we welcome week 2 of summer school. This week, we are exploring the desert. We started by reading Ecosystem: Desert by Tim Mayerling to familiarize ourselves with what we’ll be learning. Then we watched a video about life in the desert.

• Review

E: The beaver!

M: The beaver house

M: The river. (What we see in and around the river) Fish, water, rocks

A: Trees

M: cattails! Lily pads

A: ducks, frogs

E: How are wetlands formed?

M: From the mountains to the river, if it rains more river will make the wetlands.

A: it’s a cactus. I have it in my house but smaller

J: Do you know? “Seoninjang” (cactus in Korean)

M: The animals going to die cause they walk too much, its hot.

Question of the day: Is it hot in the desert?

K: Yes, because it’s summer.

J: Yes, It’s Korea (points to the desert)

M: Yes. No water, no trees, the floor is made of rocks

M: Yes, because There’s a sun always there so everything on the ground is dry

E: Because only sand no water. Sometimes make rain, some animals will die. Giraffe eat trees. No giraffe

M: You’ll burn! (when asked what will happen if we stay all day under the sun)

A: sand (points at the sand in the picture)

E: is the sun hot?

F: Yes!

M: Why is the floor cracked?

M: (When) we put the dam under the sun, and it made it dry and cracked

M: It looks beautiful (cactus)

M: If you crack it, it will die.

M: Never going to wake up

M: Bugs like hot places so they like the desert.

M: Like humans? (Nocturnal animals sleep during the day and find food at nighttime)

M: no

M: when we are in a holiday, we sleep during the day

E: Their bodies are cold (Why do they call some animals cold-blooded?) If you go to the freezer, you get so cold, you die.

Next, we made our desert diorama. We used brown playdough as our diorama base and added some rocks and twigs. It is starting to look like the desert.

What do we need to make our desert diorama?

M: sand!

M: We have to spread it around

M: Can you help me?

K: Can I put this

A: mine has the biggest sand

E: I am going to make a rock

J: like this?

What do we put next?

M/ M: rocks!

K: 1,2,3,4,5.5 rocks!

M: You need to push it in the playdough

E: I will get the big rocks

Is our desert complete?

M: twigs!

M: Can I break this in two?

M: It looks like Harry Potter (waves the twig like a wand)

M: I will turn you into a frog! (waving the twig just like Minato)

M: I will turn you into a horse!

M: neigh, neigh

For our final activity of the day, we conducted a heat absorption experiment. We placed an icepack on top of black and white paper and tin foil, then set them on the ground outside to observe which material will help the melting process.We all made our educated guess about which material would help melt the ice pack the fastest. After 5 minutes we observed which icepack melted the fastest. We learned that the icepack on top of the black paper melted the fastest, while the icepacks on top of the white and tin foil melted a little bit slower.

• Our Educated Guess

M: white

A: Black

K: foil

J: foil

M: foil

E: foil

M: I change my mind, foil

A: Me too! I choose foil

• Observation

M: this one is melting (points at the ice pack on top of the white paper)

M: This one has more (points to the ice pack on top of the black paper)

A: How about this one (foil). It didn’t melt

J/ K/ E: * touches the ice pack

• Conclusion

M: black because it takes all the sun

M: The black paper likes the sun

What do we need to wear if we are going to the desert?

M/A: Black. No White

M: or the foil, so it’s colder.

Thank you for another day of learning. See you all tomorrow!

Love,

Flowers Class