Grades 3 & 4
Last week we looked at honeybees, and today we continued our study of insects by studying cricket behavior today. Students observed crickets and over a 3 minute period, we studied what the crickets spent most of their time doing. Before we started watching the crickets, kids predicted that they would be jumping and singing, but most of the time the crickets just found a dark corner and sat. I introduced a project we will be doing between now and the Winter Break called the “Big Bug Book” where your kids will be putting together a book about insects, arachnids and other “bugs”. This includes illustrations and a little bit of text.
Assignments: Cricket Observations, introduced the “Big Bug Book”
Grades 5 & 6
Because of the 4th and 5th grade field trip on Wednesday, our class was cut a bit short this week, but we did an introduction to cells with a focus on getting an idea of what the parts of a cell are and what they do. We won’t be spending a lot of time with this, but it’s useful to have a general idea of what cells are when talk about the differences between plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, etc.
Assignment: Your school as a Cell, Organelle interview
Grades 7 & 8
Many 7th and 8th grade students still owe me lab write-ups for the baggie garden experiment or plant life cycle posters. These must be in by 11/25 in order to count, as I have to start doing grades, and these are a part of the grading process. This week we were going into more depth about cells, examining our jello cells, drawing cell pictures, taking notes, comparing the cell to a factory, etc. We also started eggs soaking in vinegar to remove the shells while keeping the membrane intact. We will use these next week for experiments on osmosis and diffusion. We also started learning the parts of a microscope for a more detailed microscope lab next week.
Assignments: Cell as a Factory, Vinegar eggs, (overdue) Baggie Garden Write-up, (overdue) Plant Life Cycle Poster.
