Mrs. Nordman ~ 1st Grade: Collecting & Examining Life

The animals have arrived! We began our Collecting and Examining Life Science unit with the arrival of brine shrimp. The brine shrimp eggs look a lot like nutmeg, so we began by preparing salt water and putting the "mystery animal" in jars labeled A, and we put an unknown substance (pepper) in jars labeled B. Then we let them sit... for several days... and then the fun began! We got proscopes, hooked them up to the computers, and watched the jars labeled A hatching!! It was so cool. We learned a lot about brine shrimp: what they look like, where they live, their life cycle stages, etc. It was a great way to begin our Living and Nonliving discussion. This will all lead to our animal research projects. We have begun learning about note taking, finding the important words in text, what information should be included in a research project, etc.

Thursday, May 21 is our ZOO field trip! Each child will hopefully get a picture taken with the animal they researched. This picture will be included in the culminating animal poster, which will be displayed at our Poster Party in the commons. We are finalizing the date for that, and I will let you know because we would LOVE to have you parents come to see this event. It will be the week AFTER our field trip.