Lafayette School, Lafayette, New Jersey

          We compared our square in Lafayette, NJ, USA to a square in New South Wales, Australia.

          First we compared animals.  The animals that we found that were similar were spiders, ants, crawling bugs, and worms.  We found a slug and a flying bug.  They did not.  We think that because their square is located in a dryer area, that they might not find slugs.  Slugs need moist earth.  We found different kinds of spiders.  We know that the jumping spider that they found,  leaves its web to look for food.

          Next we compared plants.  We both found weeds, trees, mushrooms, and grass.  We found a bush, they did not.  The Australia’s square of life  was probably located in a sunny area because we found a lot more moss and lichen in our shady square.  They found it only under their tree, but our square was covered in it.  They found a lot of plants that would do well in dry areas, like grasses and weeds.  We found some of these, but not many, because our spring season had just started and many things had not started to grow.  They were finishing up their summer season and beginning fall, so they had a lot more plant life.

          Finally we compared non-living things.  The things we both found are small rocks.  They found paper.  They had sand in their square and we had none.  We found a big rock, plastic, moist soil, and metal.  They found more sand because their conditions are dry and hot. 

What we thought of this project:

Tyler- “I like seeing other things in the world, seeing nature and animals and insects.  My favorite part was drawing the picture of our square.”

Kyle- “I liked being in the outdoors.  I also enjoyed seeing our wildlife.  My favorite part of the project was picking our squares”.

Kiprian- “I like going outside, drawing what we saw, and discovering things.”

Annika- “I liked learning about the conditions and wildlife in other countries.  I wonder what it would be like to live in Australia?”

Casey- “I liked deciding where our square would be and being outside.  I liked learning about Australia.”

Alex- “I liked going outside and looking at nature.  I also liked finding all of the insects.  Finally I liked our pizza lunch on the day we surveyed our square.”

Tiffany- “I liked finding our squares and drawing out what we saw.  I also liked discovering what Australia found and what we didn’t find.  It was fun going into the woods and doing this project.”

3-M Enrichment Final Report for the Square of Life