Leaf Discovery

Last Friday, Alessa discovered an enormous leaf at home and brought it to school to show us.  We thought it would be interesting to measure the leaf.  We gave Alessa a bag of one centimeter cubes and asked her to measure it.  Giuliana G. offered to help her.  The girls chose to measure the outside (perimeter) of the leaf.  Giuliana counted 82 cubes.  They took a picture of their work and we put it up on the Smart Board.  Giuliana started the presentation by asking the class if they could identify the number she had written down.  She congratulated the friend who had given the answer and then proceeded to show her peers where that number was on our 100 number chart.  I think we might have another teacher in the classroom!

We asked Alessa and Giuliana how many groups of 10 they could make with 82 cubes.  They made 8 groups of 10 cubes and had 2 cubes left. 

 

Today, Alessa brought another enormous leaf to school.  We compared this leaf with the one from Friday.  The leaf from last week had changed a lot in 3 days.  Here are the children observations and their explainations of what might have caused those changes:

- It`s smaller. (Kaitlyn)
- It`s broken. (Ben)
- It`s scribble (It crumpled) in the night. (Tammy)
- It`s old. (Fouad)
- It`s dead because it scrunched up and dry. (Ella)


Why did it die?

- It died because no one was taking care of it. (Ben)
- It died because it is very old. (Fouad)

What does a leaf need to live?

- It needs water to grow. (Giuliana G.)

Why is the new leaf bigger?

- It has more water. (James)

How does a leaf gets water?

- It gets water from the roots. (Giluliana G.)

So we can say that the leaf from Friday could not get water because it was not attached to its tree and therefore died. 

Alessa and Tianna put centimeter cubes around the new leaf.  To help them count how many cubes it took to measure around (perimeter) the leaf, we told them to form groups of 10.  They counted 12 groups of 10 and 4 extra cubes.  We helped Alessa write the amount of cubes "124".

The girls presented their work on the Smart board.