On March 28 we went to the Zoo. Last time Ms. Marlowe visited FSK we talked about numbers -- how a milliion seconds is a little more than eleven days, a billion a bit more than thirty-two years, but a trillion is more than 317 centuries!!! Mr. Little joined us with his son and niece. There was a lot about numbers at the Zoo, too. Sampson, the baby elephant, weighed 290 pounds when he was born and has been gaining 15 pounds a week ever since. Giraffes are six feet tall when they are born -- Cyndi watched one swallow all the way down. We watched the penguin feeding and the herring gulls trying to blend in and snatch some squid or sardines -- when the penguins are born they are brown, then they are silver and white, and then black and white. It was interesting to watch the cormorants and gulls "swim" with their feet and the penguins do the same thing with their wings! This penguin seems most interested in making sure the zoo keeper takes the right notes!
It was cold and rainy just as it was for the Newseum -- we hope we have better weather for our Swim into Summer on May 20th.

Last Session of 2008 After School Program

After reviewing the results of our acid rain experiment, we had a discussion about whether or not schools should be closed for the Inauguration. Students were divided -- most had not realized the day would have to be made up at the end of the year. Some felt that the inauguration of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president was an event of such historical significance that schools should close; others that since he had not done anything yet, other than get elected, and since one never knows about a president's term without the luxury of hindsight, schools should not be closed. We completed the 2008 after school program by celebrating the perfect attendance of nearly 25% of students in the FSK-Calvert Partnership.