Playing With the River Ecosystem

Our last day of science camp with the 1st - 5th graders was spent playing with water and learning about single celled organisms. We went to the Weber River and collected samples of water, then brought them back to the suite and made slides to see what we could find. We learned about the amoeba and the paramecium along with hydra and other organisms found in pond and river water.

describing the habitat/ecosystem

listening

determining the needs of the ecosystem

observing their specimens

drawing the ecosystem

looking at the slides

what can we find?

Web application of all the organisms we can find

working as teams to find organisms

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learning how to pronounce different organisms

Playing With Light and Color...and Addie's Recital!

Today the scholars learned the differences between color and light and where visible light is on the entire electromagnetic spectrum. They broke up white light into the ROYGBIV spectrum and drew it on their paper. They used prisms out in the sun to break up the light. Then we used light sticks to take individual green, blue, and red and put them together to form white light fluid. The scholars were able to write with the fluid and draw with it.

writing with white light

Tommy is glowing

the only time you can write on the wall...and get away with it!

Hailey making light pictures

putting together a glow ball

Mixing colors of light

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Grant spinning light sticks

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Then in the afternoon I had the pleasure of watching Addie's Recital. Here is a photo of her singing her solo....

Great job Addie! :)

Mono = One; Poly = Many

Many, Many monomers total up to make a polymer....and that's what we studied today as we learned the differences between simple reactions, and reactions that produce a product known as a polymer. We then went on a treasure hunt to find polymer products throughout the school and came up with everything from our plastic bins in the classroom to the clothes that we were wearing! We created our own polymers out of glue and borax, and then played with polymer balls.

simple reaction

baking soda and vinegar...always exciting!

post reaction

making polymers!

playing with polymers

eeewwww Tommy! ;)

drips through our fingers

fun stuff (dual banned words in sixth grade!)

make it bounce!

Echinoderms!

Today's augmentation class dissected sea stars, or as we may call them, star fish...but they are not really fish! We learned about how they can regrow appendages (arms) and how they take in food with their two stomachs and digest. They have no brain, no heart, but they're still very interesting carnivores!

Scholars had to find all the anatomical parts and label them after dissection. They included, the mouth, anus, stomach, ring canal, vascular system, tube feet, and digestive glands.

preparing for surgery....:)

measuring arms

great view of digestive glands

cutting through the skin

cracking and cutting

check this out!

removing a stomach

lifting the gonads

moving a tube foot

digestive glands

internal structures

stomach parts

from anus to mouth with tweezers!