Environmental education moves indoors

Lincoln 5th-graders have fun with science

Friday, May 20, 2005

BY AMANDA WILLIAMS

The Register-Mail

GALESBURG - Fifth-graders in Laura Bosomworth's class at Lincoln Elementary School took on a teaching role Thursday during a science carnival in the school's gymnasium for younger students.

Bosomworth's students paired off to research different environments such as the rainforest, desert, deciduous forest, tundra and prairie. The students presented their projects to the kindergarten through second-graders and set up carnival-type games that correlated with their research.

"Did you guys know that deserts cover one-fifth of the world; that's pretty cool," Shelby Hare told a group of kindergartners.

Hare and her partner Cody Drauden researched the desert and made a game similar to Skee-Ball, called "Desert CactiBall."

Deonte Thomas and his partner researched the prairie and set up a game of "Prairie Golf" for the kids.

"There are a few threats in the prairie," Thomas told the younger kids. "You know how last night we had lightning? Well, in the prairie there are also blizzards, hail and tornadoes."

While the kids took turns hitting a plastic golf ball into a green plastic putting hole, Thomas showed kindergartner Cassie Clark how to hold the plastic golf club.

Vanessa Chavoz and Taylor LeMay made a rainforest project with a ball-toss game set up to look like a small pond, decorated with plants and rubber snakes and lizards.

"We had to find out about four animals and four plants and six 'did you know' facts," Chavoz said.

The girls also used a world map to show their young audience where rainforests are located.

The kids circulated throughout the gym, listening to presentations for two minutes at a time and playing each game for about four minutes. When they got back to their classrooms they took a quiz on what they had learned.

Other than keeping time for the students, Bosomworth let the fifth-graders do all the work. During class she taught her students about layout so they would know how to make their presentations visually appealing, and how to do research on the Internet.

"Their audience is the younger grades so we kept the presentations visual and informational," Bosomworth said. "It's fun and they are so motivated. These kids know a lot about their bioms."