Meet Our New Pets

We finally received our tadpole and caterpillars so we can observe and discover their life cycles. The students have been so excited to watch the brine shrimp change and grow. They are eagerly awaiting the changes in the other two pets. The tadpole is beginning to show some of the legs and two of the caterpillars are getting into their "j". We will keep you informed of their progress.

Our Globes and Our Creatures

We are very busy in third grade. We have so many exciting things going on that we would love to share. We are working hard on our globes. The students have colored and labeled the continents and most of them have glued them on their world. They are looking more like Earth each day. Friday we hope to start putting the Equator, Prime Meridian and the North and South Pole in the correct locations.

Our brine shrimp have finally hatched. We have many tiny creatures in our habitat. The students have been making many observations about them. They are clear, white, tiny, move quickly, look like they have flippers, and like to eat algae. Tomorrow they will have another surprise... our tadpole has arrived.

Brine Shrimp Eggs (Sea Monkeys)

As part of our new science unit, living things, we have been doing Science Court. This computer program is a court case about characteristics of living things. The students are learning how to identify living things, dead things, and non-living things. Part of the court case is a test to see if eggs, specifically the brine shrimp, are alive, dead, or non-living. So we decided to check it out. We added the brine shrimp yesterday to our purified water. Now, we are making observations and inferences about our eggs. Most of the students voted that they have the potential for life. We will continue to observe and see if our inferences are correct.

We are also working hard on creating models of the Earth. We are using pumpkins as our beginning sphere. Today we made many observations about our pumpkins. We decided that the lines that run north and south on our pumpkins really do resemble lines of longitude. We began our project by painting our pumpkins blue. We will continue by coloring our continents and then marking our important lines and points next week. I will post pictures as we progress. We are very excited.