Hello Ladies and Gentlemen!
Long time no see (or hear), right? Well, just as school let out for the summer I came across a neat game that you can play. It tests how your choices will affect the environment. You answer questions about things you do at home and then at school, then you play quick little games at the grocery store and in a park. In the end, it gives you a score and a comment according to how your lifestyle choices (if you answered honestly) are affecting the environment. As it turns out, even I have a long way to go! I think that had a little something to do with how slow I was at figuring out the grocery store game... Try it and see how you do! It's certainly a good way to find out how else you can help the environment. Have fun with it! The link below will take you to the game. It's from Scholastic and is FREE!


Forest Conservation Game<-- Click here!


HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!!!

Finally, the webite connections you've been waiting for! This first site is dedicated to BAYLOR for reminding me as many times as it took to finally get this stuff posted! Thanks Baylor! This site has a neat little challenge called, "Tinker Ball" that lets you arrange pieces as you would in a wacky wonder works. Your job is to make the ball go into the cup at the bottom. Hopefully, the name below will take you to the site when you click on it... Have fun!

Play Tinker Ball!
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This next site is where you can find the rules of the Tulsa Engineering Challenge - ONCE THEY HAVE UPDATED THEIR PAGE. Remember, the only categories that Holland Hall 5th graders will be entering are: 1) Wacky Wonder Works, 2) Rubber Band Powered Vehicle, and 3) Ping Pong Ball Launcher. After we have the Engineerin Fair at school, I will be taking the top scoring machines from each of these categories to the city competition. That will be held on April 14th, 2009 at the Tulsa Technology Center - Riverside Campus, in Jenks. I can register and take only two Wacky Wonder Works machines, four Rubber Band Powered Vehicles and four Ping Pong Ball Launchers - along with the students who built them, of course! With this link, you guys can help me check the Tulsa Engineering Foundation's website daily to see when they've updated the Tulsa Engineering Challenge page for the new rules for 2009. Be sure to let me know if you catch it before I do!

Tulsa Engineering Challenge Site
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Here's the fun website we used at school on Monday/Tuesday to explore simple and compound machines around Ed's -The robot head's - house. Share this one with family and see if they can find them all and score well on the quiz! : )

Edhead's Simple Machines Activity!
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Leonardo DaVinci was an incredible man. One of his great talents was as an inventor. Check out these two links to a website that is all about his inventions and some good info. on simple machines.
*This one is the pictorial information about simple machines that you should all read! -->Inventor's Toolbox

*This one is a neat quiz that shows some of Leonardo's inventions as sketches and you have to choose what they were supposed to be. I'll admit, the first time I did this I missed at least two! -->Mysterious Machinery
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Okay, that's all for now kiddos! Have fun with all this and I'll see you back in class! By the way, be sure to ask me about how to get some extra credit from this! : )

I bring you news this evening from Mrs. Durling's pet world.

• First the bad news: Spike, my arrow crab, died. Some time in this last two weeks (since I last cleaned out my aquarium filters) he went to ocean creature heaven. At first I thought he had just molted, because I'd been thrown that trick before from my little hermit crabs. Their exoskeletons look just like their bodies - but hollow. Until you see them just blowing around with the flow of the water you can't really be sure. However, Spike has not shown up anywhere in the tank for a long time and I'm now sure that the ghostly shell I saw on the sandbed was him. So long, Spike... Cody, Sarah and I will miss your silly food-grabbing dance.
• Now for some EXCITING news! We have BABIES!!! The weekend before Thanksgiving break one of our female hissing cockroaches had babies - 18 as far as I can tell. They are about half an inch long and look like a dark brown roly poly. I am thinking that Cucka, the lighter colored female, is the mother of these babies because her stomach looks normal again. It was bulging as if she'd eaten a whole lot. If that's true, then Racha, the darker colored female may also have babies soon! Wow! It will be months before the babies will be big enough to worry about separating males from females. We won't be able to tell until they go through their last molt. Also, it will be after that last molt when they will finally be able to hiss! Yes, some of you with understanding and open-minded parents will be able to adopt a hissing cockroach toward the end of the year when they are big enough. For now, it will be fun to watch them grow! As soon as I have a decent picture I'll post one for all to see. Tomorrow I'll be bringing the females and little ones back to school and Pete will bring Papa Roach back from Thanksgiving break, only now Papa Roach really is a Papa! Ha!

You, as an Internet "surfer," really CAN make a difference! To help get donations for groups that save the rain forests, work in breast cancer research, help abused or neglected animals, or feed hungry people please read on!

I was recently informed via e-mail about some websites that really do make donations to charities based on how many clicks a website can get from people that visit that site. I'm putting a link in this blog entry so that you can check it out for yourself and I really hope that you do. The parent or host site is called CharityUSA and they have several charity icons on their homepage that you can go to and then just click the button that says you'll be making a dontation. IT DOES NOT COST YOU ANYTHING! The companies that put advertisements on those pages actually end up donating the money to the cause, simply because you showed interest and they know that you saw the items they were trying to sell. As I browsed around looking at what the advertisers had to offer I realized that I could do a lot of Christmas shopping on those pages. They had a lot of neat stuff that is made from natural and earthy materials or even recycled stuff. Some of the purchases made will actually lead to further donations to causes I care about, which makes me feel even better about buying from them. I hope you find this useful and helpful. I like that by simply clicking a button I can help people, animals and plants in need (the rain forest)!


To visit CharityUSA just click here --->CharityUSA

I have to add in here that my excellent bug-tracking cameraman was the one and only Mexico exchange student, Rodrigo Pena. He was on hand for the first observations of the roaches, along with the rest of the After School Club crew, and was more than happy to handle the videography. So, a special thanks to you, Rodrigo! Muchas Gracias!

After a while, if we consistently handle these roaches, they will stop the hissing behavior because they will become accustomed to being handled and will not feel threatened anymore. I have read that if left alone for a few weeks they will go back to it again. This would be interesting to test, but I don't know if we can leave them alone for long enough! I hope you've enjoyed your first lesson in entomology (the study of insect life) and I appologize that this blog was not about Mimas as you may have expected! (Grin!)

Until next time,
Mrs. D

I kid you not, those movie producers in Hollywood deserve ALL the money they get because making a quality movie, even one less than 2 minutes long, is HARD! This was fun, but it took me about 12 takes before I had something I felt I could publish. It could have been better if the actress could better remember her lines. : )

See you in class!

Hello! I am so happy to welcome you to 5th grade science. I can't wait to get to know you and open your eyes to the world of science. You may be surprised to discover all the many ways that science influences your life, right down to little things like bacteria! A goal of mine this year is to entice many of you to entertain the idea of studying science seriously some day. I'll introduce you to several fields of science and you may discover that you ARE a scientist already! Below you'll find one area of science that I particularly enjoy.


MARINE BIOLOGY
Since I am involved in saltwater aquarium keeping, I get to study ocean life on a small scale. Studying the real organisms is a lot more fun than reading it in books, but I also love reading all the facts that other scientists have discovered about the animals in my tank. This over here is Chuckles. He's my favorite fish because of his swimming behavior and because he actually comes to the side to look back at me!



This striped lady in the left of this photo is Sunny, a tomato clown fish. She's a cousin of the fish in Finding Nemo, but certainly not as nice. She's the bully of my tank and scares some of the other fish, especially if they get near her sleeping cave - the one she stole from another fish. Watching these animals interact with one another is very interesting. I have two species of snails, three species of hermit crab and this spider-looking crab. His name is Spike. He's an arrow crab and his behavior is fun to observe. He's mostly a scavenger, so when he finally does catch a piece of fish food before the fish he does kind of a celebration dance and quickly puts the food to his mouth to shred it up and eat it. I also have two other species of fish but they were too elusive for a picture. Maybe they'll show up in a later blog!