POOP!

Big day! We touched poop!

But let's rewind a little! Yes, today was poop-filled, but more importantly, we were able to meet an amazing animal ... Lucy the Asian Elephant!

This morning Teacher Courtney shared something serious. Elephants are endangered. Habitat loss and poaching were two ideas we explored together. We learned that some people choose to kill elephants for their tusks. 

An ivory statue and a tusk

Rather than buy ivory, people could make better and more caring choices. Elephant fans could instead buy a painting done by an elephant, write notes on "poo poo" paper made from elephant dung, or even buy carvings made from the taiga nut, which looks similar to ivory and also provides meaningful work to individuals in South America. 

Then we HELD ELEPHANT POOP! We held it!! Big day!!!!

Before meeting Lucy up close, we spent a few quiet minutes sketching and labeling her in her enclosure. 

Then it happened. We finally met Lucy!!!! 

We asked loads of questions, sang for her, and were absolutely enamored! Did you know she plays ball?

Before lunch, we went to see our chosen animal that we journal each day, but today our journaling was digital! Rather than write 3 words describing what our animal is doing, we took pictures on our iPads to show what our animal was doing. Then we assembled them using PicCollage! So exciting!

These meerkats were sleeping, standing, and scratching!

We gobbled up our lunches and were excited to meet Frodo, a 24 year-old Central Asian Tortoise! He was trying to find a gap in our circle and make a break for it! We continued our digital journaling with Frodo!

At the end of each day, Teacher Courtney has asked to journal our top moments using paper and pencil. Today, however, we did this digitally! The students were very engaged and motivated!

This student's Top 4 moments were meeting
Lucy & Frodo and seeing the tigers & seals. 

Today was a blast! How it is Thursday already?!?