Who lives in the canopy?...What is a canopy, anyway? And how does the canopy affect us, especially those of us who live here in the city?

Oozing pumpkins, dancing ghosts and flittering bats is what class is all about this week....the magic of science to make Halloween even more fun!

Here are some YouTube videos of some of the activities we did.

Oozing pumpkin
Be sure to not use too much water!

Here's the recipe for the slimy goop we made in class:
Mix 1/2 cup of white or clear glue with 1/2 cup water and food coloring of your choice.
In another cup, mix 1 tsp borax with 1 cup of water and stir until dissolved.
Pour the glue into the borax solution and stir up some goop!

There are lots of things that are awake while you are asleep!  Just two night ago, as I was thinking about this class, I was visited by a screech owl.    These tiny owls have enormous voices!  He sat outside my window and quietly warbled away, clacking his beak.

In class this week we meet several nocturnal animals - including live animals from the store, plus some very sweet camel crickets from Ms. Siobhan's basement and a raccoon called Jimmy.  We're exploring how these animals are adapted to living in the night time.  Some have very sensitive touch, some a great sense of smell and others, like the owl, have amazing eyesight.  We're working on expanding our own senses by practicing deer ears and owl eyes. We'll also find out ways to observe these animals in our own yard and check how good our observation skills are. And we're recording everything in our nature journals so we can explore further on our own later.

Check out the Class Videos page for some links and videos.

With our first handful of classes completed, Lisa and I are having a wonderful time teaching! It's a privilege to be teaching such intelligent, thoughtful children.  Now that we have got into the swing of things, I will be updating the class notes here online, and providing links to the nature videos and educational websites that we use in the classes.

We will probably still give you a paper handout for many classes when you come to pick up your child. This may describe the bigger concepts or questions we touch on in class in case you want to encourage your child to think about them further. Or it may be additional information that goes with the project. Sometimes it can help you to start a conversation with them on the way home in the car.   We will use the website for more general class notes and descriptions or things you can do at home to extend the learning if your child is interested.

Thanks for your support and we look forward to many years of new and exciting classes!

Thanks fo all of my students and parents. I've met such great families over the past twenty years and look forward to seeing you all around town.  Lisa and Siobhan will do a great job keeping science alive. My new email is RebeccaBlairNC@gmail.com if you'd like to say hello.  Love to you all.

SnotMucus (a.k.a. snot) is the sticky liquid that coats the skin and hairs in your nose. It has a special bacteria-killing chemical, and it also keeps junk from reaching your lungs, explains Branzei. "Snot is so important that your nose makes a new batch every 20 minutes."

Boogers are actually "nose garbage," she writes. "Each day, you suck in a small roomful of air. If the air was only gas, you would not even make boogers. But the air is filled with dust, smoke, grit, bacteria, tiny fungi, pollen, soot, little metal pieces, ash, fuzz, sand, and even itty bitty meteorites. One job of the nose is to clean the stuff out."

This nose-cleaning system is so effective that the nasal area is one of the cleanest parts of your body, Branzei adds. However, allergies and pollutants will trigger inflammation in the sinus lining, which creates sinus drainage, Horesh explains. "For some people, that means a runny nose, for other people, it's post-nasal drip."

Nasal sprays may help with post-nasal drip. Allergy shots and pills can control allergic reactions. "If air quality is a problem, another option is to move to Colorado," Horesh says.

Another tidbit: "The reason that smokers have more sinus and upper respiratory infections is because smoking damages the cilia, the hairs lining the sinus membranes which interfere with the natural snot mechanism," Horesh explains.

Your favorite drink is a liquid until it gets really cold.  Your liquid drink would be pretty good with ice just floating in it…the ice cubes would make the drink colder…but the ice cubes would not make the drink freeze into a slushie.

Ice forms when the temperature of water is 32 degrees or colder. You don’t want the ice cubes to melt IN your drink, you want your DRINK to turn slushie. In order to make your drink turn slushie you have to get it really cold. Salt lowers the melting point of water. To make a slushie you want the temperature around the bag of your favorite drink to be lower than 32 degrees so your drink will freeze. When you add salt to the ice cubes you lower the melting point of the ice cubes by several degrees. The ice cubes stay colder, longer – long enough to turn your drink slushie. Your salt/ice mixture will make your slushie faster than your freezer! That secret is the catalyst – the salt.

Fill the smaller container with your favorite drink and make sure the top is on good. . Add the ice and salt to larger conainer. .Place container 1 into the salt and ice. Place the top on this one and shake it gently.  In about 15 minutes y the ingredients in the smaller one will start to firm up. What started out as a liquid is changing to a solid.

And if you’re feeling like something with a few more ingredients, try this, ziploc bag ice cream!:

Words to Know:
Heat - To increase in temperature.
Melting Point – The temperature at which a substance will change from a solid to a liquid.
Thermodynamics – The study of the transfer of heat.
Catalyst – Something that makes a change happen faster.

Seawater freezes at  28 degrees.

Banana Slugs are the second largest slug in the world and can reach 8 inches in lenght.  These slugs are found in moist habitats in the West Coast of the US.

These slugs have up to 27,000 tiny teeth on their tongue that they use to chew their food, which is mainly vegetation, their favorite is mushrooms.

Banana slugs have 2 sets of tentacles, one for sight and one for smell.
The slimy coating that numbs other organisms that try to eat it.
They burrow in leaves and logs during a drough and coat themselves in slime to prevent them drying out.

You can wash your slug with soap and water.

Electricity flows in a loop called a circuit. A circuit starts and stops at
the battery pack, and flows through wires, conductive dough, and electrical
components such as LEDs and motors.
Electricity is like water; it takes the path of least  resistance. It is easier for the electricity to flow through the dough than  through the LED, so if the dough on each side is touching, electricity does not  flow through the LED at all. Therefore, the light stays unlit. This is called a  short circuit.Instead of separating the pieces of dough, you can also use  the insulating dough to separate the conductive dough. Unlike conductors,  insulators do not electricity flow through them, so the electricity must go
through the LED.
The LED (Light Emitting Diode) produces light from electrical
power. To work, it has to be oriented properly (this is called polarity).
Usually the two leads are different lengths. The longer lead goes to the
positive, or red, side of the battery pack. The shorter goes to the negative, or
black, side of the battery pack.
You must have dough between the LED and battery terminals or else the LED
will burn out.

Check out this website for more ideas:
http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/howTo.htm