Our most recent imaginary trip took us to the only Natural Wonder of North America outside of the United States. It is the Bay of Fundy, located in Nova Scotia, Canada. It has the highest tides in the world. I thought that trying to teach children about how the tide works would be a fairly challenging task but I presented it in a very simplistic way and was impressed with how much information the students seemed to absorb. They learned how the tide is created by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun on the earth. This pull creates a kind of wave in the earth's oceans that moves around the earth as the moon rotates around our planet. We talked about low tide and high tide and how this changes depending upon where the moon and sun are located. We watched a short time lapse video of the tide rising at the Hopewell Rocks at the Bay of Fundy. It is an amazing sight to see how quickly the water rises.
Our activities had to do with the high and low tides. I tied a rope to the bleachers to represent the shore and then used scooters and upside down carpet squares for children to sit on. Being away from the bleachers represented the low tide and as they used their upper body strength to pull close to the shore, it represented the high tide. Classes loved this activity and were challenged by pulling their own weight on the carpet square. We also played a game much like Hungry, Hungry, Hippos. One student laid or sat down on a scooter and held an upside down basket. A second student pushed their partner to a circle that was filled with plastic balls. The person on the scooter reached out with his basket to trap as many balls as possible and bring them back to his home base. This continued until all the balls were gone. This game represented the tide moving in and moving out. Anything left on the shore at high tide will be swept out into the ocean.
Scooters and carpet squares were used to pull the tide toward the shore.
The high tide moved towards the shore to carry everything out to the ocean.
