The Earth Zone

Wednesday (26/05/2010)

a) Prey and Predator
* Devin asked: "Why did the dog eat our Fluffy, the rabbit?"
* About 10 days ago, Zhe Qing's mother saw a wild dog eating some meat near the school while sending Zhe Qing here. At that point, nobody tought it could be the rabbit!
* Only by late evening, when we didn't see the rabbit the whole day, we felt amissed! We searched around but failed to find it!
Teacher: We can't blame the wild do. This is the animal's food. Itis the predator. It eats small animals like rabbit and mice. The rabbit was not careful enough. Furthermore, the rabbit is only about 7 months old; propbably not mature enough to hop fast and protect itself. The rabbit is the prey.
* With that understanding, they stopped asking that question repeatedly.

a) The Earth and its climate.
* I sketched an Earth on the board and divided into its zones. I introduced "Temperate" zone, "tropical" zone, as well as the Arctic and Antarctica zone.
* the Arctic zone being on the North Pole is the home of Artctic animals such as Polar Bears, seals and walruses. Penguins are on the South Pole.
* Temperate zone consist of 4 seasons namely: Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. Winter is the coldest with snow while in Spring, the sun's heat would melt the snow and booms the growth of plants and flowers. Summer is the hottest season with many activities such as sunbathing could be done. Meanwhile, Autumn is where plants start to wither their leaves as the cold season is nearing. Thus, bears living in this zone will usually sleep in their dens during winter. They will deliver their cubs of 2 - 5 while hibernating. However, mother bears have to be fat and strong enough to deliver and milk them.
* Meanwhile, tropical zone has got wet and hot climate. These countries include Malaysia and Indonesia. Thus, our bears need not hibernate. Among the bears include Asian Black Bear, Sun Bear or Honey Bear.

b) About Bears.
* We covered the basic points such as:
- 8 types of bears in the world. I used Jing Kai's encyclopaedia to give them a better picture. There are Spectacled Bear, Sloth Bear, Brown Bear, Panda, Polar Bear, Asia BlackBear, American Black Bear. Jun Hong asked why Koala is not a bear. It's because they have pouch and they belong to the Kangaroo "Marsupial" group. Bears are "Mammals".
- The smallest is the "Sun Bear" or called honey bear. Kids were amazed why they don't get stung by bees. From this fact, they know that bears can climb trees. The bigest bear is the "Polar Bear".
- Do they eat people? Bears don't attack people unless we disturbed them. They are actually gentle animals but fierce if disturbed.
- They are omnivores. They eat plants and meat. Polar Bear eat only meat. Giant Panda eat only plants.

c) Handling emotions.
* Today a few kids were grumbling and were quite playful. Thus, I had to deal with 2 of them to highligh the rights and wrongs, together with the class.