Square of Life Project Mrs. Messer’s 2 nd grade class Winter Springs Elementary Winter Springs, Florida

About Our School We are located in Winter Springs, Florida. The temperature is warm here year round, and we do get a lot of rain in the spring and summer months. We are a small town located outside the major city of Orlando. We are near several theme parks such as Walt Disney World, Sea World, and Universal. We are also close to the beach. Our School Mascot is the Kangaroo, and our school motto is “Better Together”.

Who We Compared our Squares To… We chose Quatama Elementary School located in Hillsboro, Oregon. We chose this school because it is far away and a different climate than we have, and we want to see how that changes the square findings. The temperature on November 20, 2015 in Hillsboro, Oregon is 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the temperature here in Winter Springs, Florida is 83 degrees Fahrenheit. It is partly cloudy in both places. Quatama’s school mascot is the Coyote.

Our Predictions Before we visited our squares, we made predictions on the types of plants, animals, and non-living things that we would find. PlantsAnimalsNon-living FlowersAntsConcrete WeedsSnakesDirt GrassSpidersRocks TreesBirdsPaper MossCatsTwigs Lizards Dogs

Investigating Our Squares

Plants Winter Springs Quatama Both Mushrooms Red Algae Bush Grass Trees Weeds

Animals Winter Springs Quatama Both Fire Ants Worm Ants Beetles Flying bugs Spider

Non-Living Things Winter Springs Quatama Both Aluminum Foil Sand Plastic Candy Wrapper Big Rocks Dirt Small Rocks

What we noticed… We noticed that even though we have different climates, we have many of the same things such as dirt, grass, ants, trees, weeds, and small rocks. One thing that we noticed that was different was the non-living things. We had litter in our squares such as candy wrappers and foil. They did not have any litter. We wondered why and decided that maybe they do a better job of not littering or cleaning up their school campus.

We really enjoyed this project! Thank you for viewing our report. We hope that you enjoyed it!