Today's theme work was pretty related to the sun. We read a segment of a Gail Gibbons book about the moon and then went down to the kitchen to see the moon's phases for ourselves. It's a fun experiment and, if you've never really thought about the moon's phases, I hope you'll ask your Heron to help you re-create it. To see the phases, you stand with a ball extended at arm's length. A friend holds a flashlight or projector light about 5 feet from you and the ball. When you face your friend, you will see no light on the surface of the ball (a new moon). Slowly turn counterclockwise while keeping your arm extended — a crescent will appear and grow into a full moon (when you have your back to your friend) and then, as you continue, the moon will wane back to a new moon. Don't forget to try to create a lunar and solar eclipse while you're at it.
We've also had a lot of fun figuring out just how much energy we use in the school and how much we produce with our solar array. After gathering data for several days, we saw that during a sunny afternoon hour we gather about 2500 watts (right now — students predict that the maximum will go up until June 21). That's about enough power for 25 100 watt light bulbs for one hour. We then counted all of the fluorescent tubes in our classroom. We had 27 tubes that use 32 watts each (864 watts per hour). So, in a peak hour, the solar panel powers the upstairs classrooms and a little more. Needless to say, there was a huge amount of enthusiasm for counting every light bulb and energy consuming device in the school. Also needless to say, we've had our classroom lights off a lot more often. I love these real life "Problems of the Week." We had some great discussions about assumptions we were making ("if all the lights were on…") and the estimations we could use ("a classroom uses about 900 watts of electricity").
The Rookery 
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