Owl Pellets

This week, our class had the opportunity to dissect owl pellets in CLIC.  We had a blast pulling apart the pellets and seeing what kinds of bones were inside.  We then took the bones and recreated the skeletons of mice and other rodents!

Animal Adaptations and Birds of Prey

This week, our class was lucky enough to experience two enrichment activities relating to Science.  The first was a visit from Mrs. Condon, the CLIC teacher, who led us through an activity about the adaptations of beavers.  We learned a lot of interesting things about beavers, including that they can use their tail as a chair!

Mrs. Condon pointing out some adaptations of beavers.

Stephanie was a very good sport and modeled the adaptations of a beaver, including clear eyelids (the goggles), two layers of fat for insulation (the foam) and webbed feet (the flippers)!

Thanks, Stephanie!

On Thursday, we had a visit from Mr. Parks who runs a program called "Wingmasters".  Mr. Parks has spent years rescuing and rehabilitation injured birds of prey.  He brought in some of these birds, including a Peregrine Falcon (the fastest animal on earth), a Barred Owl, an American Kestrel (the only type of falcon that lives in Topsfield) and the very cute Northern Saw-Whet Owl.  We were amazed by these incredible birds of prey!

Thank you to TESPO for funding this wonderful program!

Gummy Bears in Science?!

This week in Science, we conducted a really fun experiment involving gummy bears in different solutions.  

We started by making observations, asking questions and forming hypotheses.

Then we put our gummy bears in the four different solutions and let them sit overnight.

The next day we made observations about our gummy bears.  A lot had happened overnight!

Then we shared our observations as a class.

Though all four gummy bears were affected by the different solutions, it seemed as though the water and baking soda mixture caused the most change.

This would be an easy experiment to try out at home with different solutions!