Explorers were recognized at the Wahl-Coates Awards Assembly, February 6th, for their first place finish in the 3rd-5th grade science division at the Unnatural Resources fair with their recycled project, "Biodiversity."
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What a great meeting! The meeting had three distinct segments. Club meeting, watershed experiment and art time! This was the officers first meeting to lead a meeting. They gave reports and started learning their roles. At the end of the meeting portion, Explorers were invited to share their individual science adventures. There was lots of talk about found insects, explorations of ditches, and the ECU lecture by Eileen Collins. After the club meeting portion, we conducted a little hands-on demonstration/experiment to help explain what a watershed is and how pollutants migrate into our waterways. This helped give them a visualization of how a watershed is bound by high elevation points and that pollutants, sediments, etc. migrate to the lowest point in the watershed. You can find the exercise on page 4 of Watershed Excursion Teacher's Guide published by the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Lastly, we got creative! Explorers began working on their entry to the 2013 Unnatural Resources Fair competition that will also be exhibited in the K-12 Youth Expressions Art Project at the Greenville Mall and at the K-12 Works by Pitt County School's Art Students at the Greenville Museum of Art. All three events take place in the second half of the school year. The theme for this year's Youth Express Art Project is biodiversity which fits perfectly with our botanical/entomology theme we had already selected. Using materials destined for either the trash can or recycle bin, Explorers started tranforming the objects into one of a kind insects and beautiful flowers. We want to thank all of the parents that sent items in and Mr. Phillips for lending us his classroom and glue gun and for providing direction and assistance! These four Explorers worked over the summer and into early fall assembling this collection of insects. They entered their entomology collection, Summer Collection, into the Pitt County Fair for competition. Their hard work paid off. They placed 3rd in their age group. We are super proud of these Explorers. Resources:
BugFest is the nation’s largest bug-centric festival celebrating all things buggy happens each September at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Featuring events like the Roachingham 500 and Café Insecta, where local chefs cook up some tasty treats featuring–you guessed it–bugs, mixed with educational programming, music and entertainment, this event is a family favorite. This year BugFest will take place Saturday, September 15th from 9a-7p at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science with exhibits and buggy fun on Jones Street, The Plaza, Edenton Street, and all four floors of the Museum! This year's theme bug: mantids! It is a fun, free event! Explorers worked on pinning specimens for their entomology collection they will enter in the Pitt County Fair this fall. After they had pinned all mounting ready specimens, they explored the various gardens around the Pitt County Cooperative Extension to find more insects for their collection. They also found a tomato horn worm with braconid wasp larva which was quite interesting to see. The morning proved fruitful. Their pin boards are full as are their specimen vials. Explorers met this morning at the Pitt County Arboretum and Gardens to hunt for insects for their Entomology collection. They were quite fruitful in their hunt finding 21 insects! The insects are in the freezer and will be ready for pinning at our next meeting, July 21st. If you find an insect you would like to contribute to the collection between now and July 21st, place it in a vial/jar and then freeze it. Keep it in your freezer until our July 21st meeting! Thank you parents and Explorers for giving of your time this morning! Until we meet next month, happy bug hunting! Due to a scheduling change, we had our fun end of the year science art time yesterday. Explorers painted aluminum can flowers to place on their raised beds and to take home as Mother's day gifts. They also made sunprints using various botanical items from the valley. After they were done, they went bug hunting. Links: - Sunprints Inspiration - When Old Soda Cans Blossoms into Beautiful Flowers - Upcycled Insects - Aluminium Can Crafts - Metal Flowers Directions on how to make aluminum can flowers: Galvanized screws were used to attach the finished flowers to the wooden raised beds.
Several members of the East Carolina 4H Club that are way into entomology came out to discuss the order Orthoptera with the Explorers. After discussing what makes crickets, grasshoppers and katydids unique, they started the jumping experiment. The experiment was to compare the jumping ability of the cricket to humans (students). Supplies needed for this experiment:
First, the length of the cricket was measured (2 cm) and then the length of the cricket's jump was measured (5cm). Next, each of the students took a turn jumping (standing broad jump style) and the length of their jump was recorded. Then, the height of each of the students was measured. Finally, to determine the jump to size ratio, the jump was divided by the participant's height/length. As the chart above shows, the cricket was the best jumper. It jumped 2.5 times its size. The closest student jumped 1.23 times their size. While we had researched that insects in the order Orthoptera can jump up to 20 times their size, we were quite impressed by the 2.5 times that our specimen jumped. After the ratios had been calculated and discussed, the students participated in a cricket jumping race. While most of the crickets preferred jumping in the opposite direction of where the students were trying to coach them to jump, we did have a couple that went for gold. Explorers weeded one of the club’s two raised beds to prep them for planting at our next meeting, April 5th. Mrs. Lineberry's 1st grade class had been kind enough to weed one of the beds for us. We have an appropriate thank you planned for those special 1st graders. While weeding the raised bed, we talked about insects and their role in nature. They found insects and arachnids as they weeded and placed them in viewing jars to examine after weeding was complete. The Ladybug Project is a project to catalog ladybug sightings across North America. It is a great way to get kids involved in science research. When a student finds a ladybug, they take a picture of it and upload the picture along with some information about where they found it to the Cornell University lab studying the different types of ladybugs and their range of habitat.
To learn more and get involved, click here. |
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