Invertebrates

 One week we learned about invertebrates that are NOT arthropods. Featuring Molluscs, annelid worms, and coelenterates. KIDS LOVE WORMS! What can I say? if you want giggles and squeals and a successful science day, just bring out some worms! 

We even dissected worms. 

We also talked about shells, and pearls, and octopi, and we even had the kids EAT snails! The kids thought this was super strange (my French friends did not come, needless to say.) And it was a case of daring and nerves and crazy bravery.

Our next science was learning about invertebrates that ARE arthropods. Featuring insects, spiders, and crustaceans. 

I had asked the kids to start an insect collection two weeks earlier, and I'm glad I did because we had snow for our science day, Some of my kids dutifully put some insects in their freezer or jars and we delighted to show them off. We had an experiment where we had pipe cleaners and pompoms represent insects and they went to "flowers" with glitter "pollen" and we watched as the "pollen" got mixed together. GLITTER WAS EVERYWHERE! 

With the littles, we had a lot more activities involving insects including getting all the stages of butterflies:

But for the older we did dissections of crawdads as well. It was interesting to see teeth inside their stomach! who knew!

Living Things-Biology

 For science, we started our club. We've had them outside for the first few lessons. This year, we are learning Biology. 

For our first club we learned about what actually qualifies something as living. We also talked about Natural Selection. One of the highlights was looking through my telescope at some pond scum where we were able to actually see some moving single celled organisms!!!

Our second lesson was about cells. We made a couple of cell models, including one out of CANDY. Always a hit.

See the DNA/sprinkles inside our Oreo/nucleus? Classic.

We also talked about osmosis, and I had made a "naked egg" from vinegar, and took it out to show the little class (I have two classes, one for littles and one for bigger kids) how big it was, and it exploded on me! I guess I hadn't left it in vinegar long enough!

The next lesson we learned about classification, bacteria, and fungus. For classification, we took a million shoes and created our own taxonomy to decided how to map every shoe. (This is actually something I did in middle school, and I've never forgot it.)

For our main bacteria activity, I had them take a queue tip and try to find some bacteria in my house, and put it in a petrie dish. I'm not sure if it worked, but they had so much fun hunting for nasties!

Also, we ate active yogurt, as you can see.  For fungus we looked at mould and mushrooms and yeast. It's weird to think that mould spores are already on all our food long before they mould!!!