Common Core Carnival

Source 1

SURVIVAL IN THE WILD

Plants and animals have the hard job of surviving in a very wild world. How do they do it? There are many ways plants and animals have adapted in order to survive.

Camouflage is one way animals adapt to survive. For some animals, this means that their fur, scales, or skin are a similar color to the land around them. Deer, for example, have brown fur that blends in with the trees, so it’s harder for predators to see them. This saves them from becoming prey to a larger animal. Some animals can actually change colors to match their environment. Many people think of chameleons when they think of this type of camouflage, but rabbits are a great example as well. Some rabbits’ fur will change colors depending on the season. Their fur might be brown in the spring, summer, and fall to match the trees, but the brown fur will fall out and white fur will grow in the winter to blend in with the snow. This way the rabbit is safer from predators year-round.

Some insects, instead of blending in with their environment, look like something else that will deter animals from eating them. A walking stick looks just like a stick so that predators will pass it by without noticing it. Katydids mimic leaves. Some moths and butterflies have designs on their wings that make them look like snakes or owls, to scare away their predators.

For some plants, however, they don’t want to blend in; they want to stand out to survive! Many plants grow flowers with colorful petals to attract bees. The bees help pollinate the flowers so that they can produce new flowers.

Instead of hiding, some plants and animals develop structures that aim to hurt anything that tries to hurt them. Some plants develop thorns so that animals will not eat them. Some animals have extremely sharp teeth and claws so they can fight off other animals. Porcupines and hedgehogs even have spikes, called quills or spines, covering their backs so animals won’t want to eat them!

There are many ways plants and animals have adapted to survive in the wild. Do you know of any other ways?

Source 2

HOW FRANKLIN FOUND OUT THINGS.

Franklin thought that ants knew how to tell things to one another. He thought that they talked by some kind of signs. When an ant had found a dead fly too big for him to drag away, he would run off and get some other ant to help him. Franklin thought that ants had some way of telling other ants that there is work to do.

One day he found some ants eating molasses out of a little jar in a closet. He shook them out. Then he tied a string to the jar and hung it from a nail in the ceiling. But he had not got all the ants out of the jar. One little ant liked sweet things so well that he stayed in the jar and kept on eating like a greedy boy.

At last, when this greedy ant had eaten all that he could, he started to go home. Franklin saw him climb over the rim of the jar and then run down the outside of the jar. But when he got to the bottom, he did not find any shelf there. He went all round the jar. There was no way to get down to the floor. The ant ran this way and that way, but he could not get down. Finally, the greedy ant thought he would see if he could go up. He climbed up the string to the ceiling. Then he went down the wall to his own hole in the floor.

After a while the ant got hungry again. He thought about that jar of sweets at the end of a string. Then perhaps he told the other ants. Maybe he let them know that there was a string by which they could get down to the jar.

In about half an hour after the ant had gone up the string, Franklin saw a swarm of ants going down the string. They marched in a line, one after another. Soon there were two lines of ants on the string. The ants in one line were going down to get at the sweet food. The ants in the other line were marching up the other side of the string to go home. Do you think that the greedy ant told the other ants about the jar?

And did he tell them that there was a string by which an ant could get there?

And did he tell it by speaking, or by signs that he made with his feelers?

If you watch two ants when they meet, you will see that they touch their feelers together, as if they said "Good-morning!"

One day Franklin was eating dinner at the house of a friend. The lady of the house, when she poured out the coffee, found that it was not hot.

She said, "I am sorry that the coffee is cold. It is because I forgot to scour the coffee pot. Coffee gets cold more quickly when the coffee-pot is not bright."

This set Franklin to thinking. He thought that a black or dull thing would cool more quickly than a white or bright one. That made him think that a black thing would take in heat more quickly than a white thing.

He wanted to find out if this were true or not. There was nobody who knew, so there was nobody to ask. But Franklin thought that he would ask the sunshine. Maybe the sunshine would tell him whether a black thing would heat more quickly than a white thing.

But how could he ask the sunshine?

There was snow on the ground. Franklin spread a white cloth on the snow. Then he spread a black cloth on the snow near the white one. When he came to look at them, he saw that the snow under the black cloth melted away much sooner than that under the white cloth.

That is the way that the sunshine told him that black would take in heat more quickly than white. After he had found this out, many people got white hats to wear in the summer time. A white hat is cooler than a black one.

Sometime when there is snow on the ground, you can take a white and a black cloth and ask the sunshine the same question.