Changes in Plant and Animal Populations

My scientists are loving all the learning and observations we are making with our "special guests".  Science continues to be a favorite time for many students.  They have been learning about aphids, damselflies, and daphnia.  We will be introducing ladybugs and fruit flies as well this week with the purpose of observing how populations change with there are predator-prey relationships.

So far, we put the damselflies and daphnia together and guess what!  The population of the daphnia changed and today....they are GONE!!!!  The damselflies are alive and well.  HMMM????

image of damselfly

image of daphnia

The aphid were placed on our plants and guess what! The bean plants are wilting but the pea plants are still alive and growing.  Are they picky eaters????  We also have a lot more aphids!

aphid

Tomorrow we will be putting ladybugs with our aphids on the plants.  Can anyone predict what will happen???  I think you are getting the idea of our science and observing changes in populations.

In between all of these observations, the students are learning how to do a mini research project.  Each student selected a strange insect or arachnid to learn about (and some of them are VERY strange).  After modeling about how to determine what is important, writing brief notes, and putting information into our own words, the students began gathering facts about their interesting insect.  This was a great introduction to research and how to use information on the internet that is written for kids, which will be handy for the end of the unit assessment. Stay tuned....

Students will soon be sharing their insect inquiry facts on their blog pages.  Science involves reading and writing too!