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Week 3 blog

 This week in lab we were discussing the butterfly cycle and how it connects to the characteristics of living things. From what we learned last week, one of the 8 characteristics of living things is growth and development. A life cycle is a series of changes in an organism's life. For the activity we did today, we made life cycles out of play dough. My partner and I decided to make a turtle life cycle. 

The stages of a turtle's life cycle are eggs, hatchlings, juveniles, and adults.

We were then looking at the life cycles of plants. Plants go through a life cycle of seeds, seedlings, then plants. To look at this life cycle, we are planting fast plants. 


From what I learned/did this week in the lab, I can apply it to my future teaching lessons. I really enjoyed making the life cycle of animals out of play dough. It is interactive and hands-on. I can see myself using this in my future classroom, or even making it a drawing. I liked the play dough aspect though since it was a sensory feeling for students. This activity allows students to research an animal and its life cycle, and then students can show the class their findings. 

Also last week we were talking about the germination of our seeds. We finally were able to look at the seeds we planted last week. This was our result:

I am so amazed that our seeds grew from a cotton ball, water, and sunlight. Now, this is no longer a dormant seed, it is now an active seed. Our seeds are now seedlings. Some of them did not grow anything, but I believe that is because it was not deep enough down in the cotton balls. 

Remaining questions:

How is our fast plant going to grow in forty days? That seems very fast for a plant to grow. What makes this plant grow so fast? Is it the fertilizer seeds? Or is it the seed type we used? Could it be both together counteracting? 


Comments

  1. Julia MikkelsenFebruary 2, 2023 at 1:36 PM

    Great post Amber! I had a lot of fun making our turtle life cycle out of playdough with you! I loved how you thought about the playdough being a sensory feeling/activity for students! I also do think that bringing this activity to my future classroom is a great idea! I loved seeing how creative our classmates got with it and I would love to see how creative my students will get!

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  2. Alicea UlrichFebruary 2, 2023 at 2:05 PM

    I really enjoyed your post! I did not do a turtle model so seeing how you guys did it was really cool. I think that doing this activity gave us all memories of playing with playdo, as well as just being a student again. I will definitely use this way of making models in my future classroom! I have similar questions on how this plant will grow in just forty days.

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