Square of Life Comparison

Blue Ridge School District 

Mrs. Thomas Tuesday Group

            We live in the White Mountains of Arizona, we have four seasons.  We get snow and even miss school for snow days.  Our school is 7,000 feet above sea level.  We choose to compare our squares to the school in Japan and the school in Queensbury, New York.  We know that New York isn’t that high, but we know that Japan has a lot of mountains, so we don’t know if we are higher than them. 

  It was interesting to see the things that were the same, especially the insects.  It is funny to think that the same kinds of insects live everywhere.  We would like to see exactly what some of the insects looked like. Both places had a few more types of insects than we did.  We think that it is because of the moisture.  We know that New York and Japan are closer to water than we are and get more rain.  We also had crows; they hang around the school a lot.  The only time we don’t see them is when it is really cold. 

We really live in a dry forest; that gets forest fires.  We only get fungi in the rainy season.  They had fungi because it is moist there.  We have more kinds of trees, we live in a  very wooded community.  There are trees everywhere.  We have so many trees that we have to thin our trees for the forest to be healthy.

            New York had more litter and we think that is because of the amount of people that live there.  We have more people here than before and we have more litter now. 

            We think that both places have richer soil and that is because of the rain and land.  We live in the mountains with really rocky soil.  To have a garden we have to buy topsoil.  In Japan they had a more formal garden.  We could tell that by the man-made things in their data.  Our squares were on the school grounds and were in natural forest.  We wonder if most of Japan is like the school. 

Square of Life Comparison

Blue Ridge School District 

Mrs. Thomas Thursday Group

            Arizona is not all hot deserts; we live in the mountains in the largest stand of Ponderosa Pine Trees in North America.  We get snow and have skiing near where we live.  Our school is 7,000 feet above sea level.  We choose to compare our squares a school in Quebec, Canada and a school in Clarksville, Tennessee (10/18). 

            The school in Quebec had a lot more insects and worms than we did.  We think that is because it is more moisture there.  They get more rain and are near a river.  The soil here isn’t really good because of the rocky mountain soil and little rain that is why we don’t have a lot of worms.

            We have a greater variety of trees than Quebec, because we live where two eco-systems overlap.  There oak trees that loose their leaves and conifers that stay green year round.

            Quebec had sand and we don’t; we think that is because of the nearness of the river.  They had more litter and we think that is because Quebec is a big city with a lot of people and the river may bring trash to the city.

            We were shocked that Clarksville had no trees.  Wow, no trees, we can’t imagine no trees.  We live in the largest stand of Ponderosa Pines in North America. 

            How cool to have no litter.  The kids must be very neat there.