Excellent Engineering

Who knew we had a bunch of geo-technical engineers in our room. This afternoon we went out and explored the pond area to the east of Footprints Academy. This pond was formed from the drainage and run off water from Footprints. This area is a perfect place for a rain garden. Today the kids went out to find the perfect place for a rain garden. In order to find the perfect place, they had to perform three tests on the area. They had to find the slope of the land and it had to be less than 15%. A slope greater than 15% requires help from the city of Woodbury to help us dig. They had to dig a one foot by one foot by one foot hole and do a soil test--the students picked up a handful of dirt and had to squeeze it into a ball. If the soil stayed in a ball form, the soil is too clay-like and is an indicator of poor water absorbtion and drainage. If the soil was most and not too sandy it was an indicator of a well draining area. The last test the kids performed was a water test. They had to pour 8-12 inches of water in their holes. We let the water sit for 15 minutes and used rulers to measure how much water had been absorbed into the soil. We then multiplied that number by 12 to see how much water would be absorbed in one hour. Anything more than .5 inches/hour indicated great soil. I took several pictures of the kids hard at work. Click here for more pictures. Tomorrow we will be comparing and compiling our data to determine our top preference area for our garden. What a great day!

A quick side note: We returned to our first grade selves this morning. For our morning meeting game we sang the song "Tooty Ta." Ask your student to sing it for you. Click on the link to hear the song. Hopefully you will enjoy these hilarious pictures and video.

Homework: Finish math, spelling test tomorrow, re-write/organize science observations from this afternoon.