Animal Communication

 

We had a lovely rainy day last week, learning about animal communication. Our day was extra special because we had a visit from local artist Rema Boscov, who was here to help us with our art projects!

We started with a drizzly but fun game of red light green light animal style. Then we came inside for morning circle. For greeting, we explored how funny human communication can be with a few rounds of “telephone” – there were lots of laughs when the end message changed a lot from the original message!

Everyone worked on the home project last week, which was to do a little research on our adaptation animals. Kids came in with lots of interesting facts.

 

Soon Rema arrived and we began our drawings. I was SO IMPRESSED with kids’ work! Everyone became a serious artist for a whole hour, putting lots of careful attention into their animal projects. You will truly be wowed at our progress when you come in on the last day!

 We used the light table to make outlines of our animals.

 Then we came over to the table to color our animals in with colored pencils.

 

After an invigorating rendition of the Elephant Song, we read the morning message and learned the password of the day “pheromone.” Pheromones are chemical signals animals give off to send messages to their friends and family members. (Later, we became ants and did a pheromone activity!)

Then it was time to go outside.We started with a "bee dance." Honeybees communicate to their sisters about the whereabouts of nectar by doing a waggle dance. So homeschoolers looked for a hidden flower in the garden of the Hitchcock Center. When they found the flower, they couldn't announce its location. Instead, they danced. A circle dance means the flower is close, and a figure 8 dance means it is a little farther. The center line of the figure 8 points in the direction of the flower. A little confusing, but it was fun to waggle!

  

We walked through the wet green woods and headed to the farm pond. Some highlights were a duck egg in the pond, a dead snake (ribbon or garter? We couldn’t tell), and lots of red-winged blackbirds singing different songs and making different calls. We wondered what they were trying to communicate.

 

When we got back, we ate lunch. Then we embarked on our pheromone activity. There were two species of ants – the sugar ants and the honey ants. Each team had to follow the scent trail to find their food source. The “pheromones” were film canisters with scents inside. The ants could only follow their own scent trail, so if they found a “pheromone” that wasn’t their scent, they had to put it back and find another one.

Sniffing the "pheromone"

This week we will continue to work on our animal drawings and visit Hans to learn more about honeybees!