According to students in Texas and California, the great, green, growing race has begun. Their reports arrived during the month of January, saying tulips had already emerged from the ground!
Last fall, over 150 official Journey North Tulip Gardens were planted on school grounds across North America. These tulips will serve to confirm the arrival of spring in each community. You're invited to take a special online garden tour to see how they were planted.
When do you think North America's first tulips will BLOOM? We're ready and waiting to collect reports of the first tulips to BLOOM this spring. In the meantime, link up with another Journey North classroom so you can share and compare results. Challenge one another to predict blooming dates in places across the continent. (In the Spring Fever activity on page 145 of the Journey North Teacher's Manual, you can test how temperature and tulips are related.)
Here are the
season's first tulip reports:
From CALIFORNIA:
January 26, 1996
Dear Journey North,
Our tulips are about an inch above the ground now. The kids check them several times a day and are really excited about the project. We have noticed some nibbled leaves (snails I assume) and are now debating strategies to protect our tulips.
We are in Palo Alto, California, south of San Francisco very near Stanford University.
Ms. Surber's Class LSurber@aol.com
From TEXAS:
Mrs. Leland's Class Houston, Texas January 8 and January 25, 1996 joleland@tenet.edu
Dear Journey North,
We planted our 29 tulip bulbs on the 14th of December. Travis has been keeping a weather log so we can remember generally what the weather was like.
* The first week we had temperatures in the 80's. * The next week was rainy and colder. * The third week the temperatures were kind of up and down. * The fourth week was warm and a lot like spring. That weekend, we had rain on one of the days and it was the coldest at night that it has been in 5 years! Travis's birdbath froze for the first time all year. Many of us noticed frost on our car windows or grass.
Every day since we came back from vacation on January 3 we have gone outside to measure our tulips. But there was nothing to measure--until today, January 8th.
Here is our first tulip measurement!
January 8, 1996
Student Tulip Height Ryan C 2 cm Kristen R 2.5 cm Erin M 1 cm
P.S. Just one last note for your interest/amusement(?). Our school is filled with pictures of snowmen, snowflakes, snowscenes, and longing for a small sample of that which you are kneedeep in! Isn't it ironic?
January 25, 1996
Dear Journey North Tulip Friends: Here is a progress report on how our tulips are growing. The leaves are starting to spread apart, some have side shoots, but we have NOT found any flower buds yet. We are starting to make different kinds of graphs, to share our information with other kids at our school. Some funny people in our room. Erin and Andrea were joking about bar "grass", picto "grass", and pie "grass". Ben was the one who made up that joke first. So actually, this is a tulip and grass report from us!
Here's a table to share our other tulip heights:
Student Tulip Height Brian 22 cm Erin 17 cm Dugan 18 cm Ryan 20 cm (Yesterday it was 19 cm tall.) Two of our tulips are 22 cm tall. Abbey 16 cm Ben 14 cm Lindsey 14 cm Patrick's 13.5 cm Kristen, 13 cm Ashley M 13 cm Sarah, 13 cm Brett 8 cm Caitlyn 11 cm Emily 11 cm Lauren 0 cm Matt 7 cm Rusty 0 cm Travis 10 cm As you can see, only 2 of our student bulbs have not emerged.
Mrs. Leland and Class Houston, Texas joleland@tenet.edu
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If you'd like to connect with another classroom, use the Teacher to Teacher Feature. Here's how:
To Send a Message:
1. Address an e-mail message to: jn-talk@learner.org 2. Introduce yourself! Remember to mention your grade level and your geographic region in the message.
To Read Messages From Others:
Via the WWW: Select the "Teacher-Teacher" button on the Journey North WWW site. All messages will be archived there.
Via E-mail Send a message to majordomo@learner.org In the Subject Line of the mesage write: Teacher to Teacher Feature In the body of the message write: subscribe jn-talk You'll receive a copy of all messages sent to the Teacher to Teacher Feature.
The next Tulips Update will be posted on February 16, 1996.
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