Friday, October 23, 2009

Day #33/175 Days - LC Bates class

Not a lot of photos today. I never passed off the camera & Mr. H kept trying to help. The class today was on mollusks. There are a lot of them & I learned some neat stuff. My boys did too. We discussed a bit of it on the ride home today.

We again started upstairs & Serena let the children explore the "sea" room & look at all the different specimens of mollusks in there. There is even one of a giant clam - it's over three feet long!

Then we went to check out the fossil display. Here is Happy with his favorite pal & his mom.

Downstairs in the classroom area, where it was only slightly warmer than the rest of the museum (it's not heated), the children saw all kinds of different types of mollusk shells and learned some interesting facts about how they grow, their colors, and their patterns.

Miss Serena showing the children how a mollusk (clam I think) would move through the water.

Interesting fact: The patterns on a mollusk's shell (sea shells) come from the animal that lives inside of it. Whatever pattern is on the shell, that is the pattern/colors on the animal. I thought that was especially interesting given the colorful shells we examined today.

As a hands-on project, the children all made a shell collection:


We are really enjoying these classes. It gives the boys a chance to see some friends and learn some science as well. I'm hoping we can put something together for the spring as well. We have one more class in late November. It is going to be cold but hopefully fun.

1 comment:

Cynthia said...

These classes sound like a LOT of fun!