At Cogitania’s Saturday Botany workshop fourth graders explored plant extinction in greater depth. They learned about biodiversity and the threats to ecosystems and plants. We defined the concepts of endangered and threatened and what humans are doing to protect these plant species.
Read MoreAt Cogitania's Saturday Botany workshop fourth graders learned about plant extinction as a natural process and modern extinction rates that are now 10 to 100 times their natural rate due to human impact.
The students also learned about vascular, spore producing ferns, and their ability to survive for millions of years and mass extinction by evolving to the species that live on Earth today. To discover how ferns are different from seed producing flowering plants, students explored live ferns and using hand lenses and microscopes drew pictures of the ferns and labeled their parts.
Shapes, Associations, and Object Relationships
We then played with the idea that the placement and movement of visual elements can affect our perception of intention, even when applied to inanimate objects, by moving cutout shapes according to a series of action prompts (ex. fighting, hiding, jumping).
Seldom do I teach a Cogitania session myself, but today was a special exception as I decided to share my own garden with your kids, along the way discovering varieties of plants from tip to toe and how parks and gardens differ. The garden was very generous, sharing and revealing its' story to us.
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