Living Root Garden School • Water & Weather • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the walker on water — something skates across the pond without getting its feet wet, while something else hunts below. Who is who in the pond?
Watch the walker on water: water striders walk on top of the pond, on surface tension — the water's skin, stretched tight like a trampoline — plus water-repellent hairs on their feet that spread their weight. They dent the water without breaking through and never get wet feet.
Look for the underwater hunter: before a dragonfly ever flies, it lives underwater for months as a nymph — a chunky six-legged hunter with a jaw that shoots out like a party blower to grab mosquito larvae and tadpoles. Then one day it climbs out, splits its skin open, and unfolds wings.
Spot the tiny fish with a huge job: mosquitofish are small and plain, and they eat mosquito larvae by the hundreds. That is why Florida ponds and ditches are full of them — a fish the size of your pinky finger that eats tomorrow's mosquitoes.
Rule out the lookalikes: duckweed is the world's smallest flowering plant — tiny green ovals floating on the surface — and azolla is a tiny floating fern. Both feed ducks, fish, and chickens. Water spinach looks like a pond plant too, but it is banned in Florida because it takes over waterways. Never move pond animals or plants to a different pond.
Ask: Morning or late afternoon — when will the pond be busiest? Write your guess before you sit on the bank.
Try: Sit at a pond's edge for twenty minutes and log everything you see — from the bank, with a grown-up. Striders skating, dragonflies patrolling, minnows flickering in the shallows. Early morning and late afternoon are the busiest times.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Draw the pond's food web and star every link you actually saw: algae and tiny plants get eaten by tiny animals, which get eaten by minnows and nymphs, which get eaten by bigger fish, frogs, and herons. Which links did you see, and which ones are still just a guess?
Tell: Fill in the log below — everything you saw, and what each one was doing — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The pond's busiest time was ___ because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw your pond's food web as a circle — duckweed at the bottom, the biggest bird at the top, arrows for who eats whom.
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Tell someone how a water strider walks on water without sinking — in your own words, no reading off the packet.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can name three pond citizens and their jobs.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Pond log + food web
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can name three pond citizens and their jobs.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.