Okay everyone. We did a lot this week and some of it is kind of gross, but really fun. We did three labs this week, two involving a microscope, one involving dissection. The first lab we did was finishing our sponges and hydra lab. We really made our hydra mad and he tried to sting us. Good luck with that little guy. They look like tiny sea anemones and the venom in their nematocysts isn't strong enough to hurt humans. So jokes on you. The second lab we did was observing flatworms. The worms were much more active than the hydra, but mine was very lazy. We created a false magnetic field to see how it affected the worm. Mine turned in a certain direction and stopped. Then it didn't move. I really couldn't tell if it was dead or not. Of all the things it could have done, it decides to die. Sad. The third lab was dissecting these enormous earthworms. These things were more than a foot long. They didn't fit lengthways into the dissecting pan, so we had to go corner to corner.

We are having a test once we finish our earthworm dissection lab, and I know most of it, but I need to touch up on my vocabulary a little bit. I also need to work on my Science Olympiad. I finished my salinometer/hydrometer so thats out of the way,  but I need to study my marine ecosystems and estuaries. I didn't realize how much work this actually was, so I took on three events, which was a bad idea on my part.  I mean, heredity I'm not worried about because one, we studied heredity earlier in the year, and my partner is researching what we don't know.

Another thing that happened this week was our science teacher, Mrs. Giacomelli, got slimed for charity. Our seventh grade students have to pick a UN Millennium goal and try to help bring it along for a huge part of their social studies grade. One of our students, Zane, picked education in Afghanistan for his project, and he somehow talked Mrs. G into getting slimed. For ever dollar donated, he would add an ounce of slime to the bucket. Zane raised three hundred dollars! Great job Zane! And a big round of applause to Mrs. G for helping out. Here is the link for the video that was on the news! http://www.wect.com/video?clipId=9868527&autostart=true

As my Aunt would say, Heeeey Y'aaallll.  Today we are going to be talking about Sponges and Cnidarians(pronounced nidarians). Sponges and cnidarians are actually pretty cool creatures. Sponges are not the sponge you use in your kitchen sink, although they look very similar. Sponges are known as the vacuum of the sea because they suck in dirty water and then they push it back out clean of all the little micro-organisms. Cnidarians are a class all their own. These are the jelly fish, sea anemones, etc. They use little polyps full of poison to catch their food, although many do not contain enough of this toxin to injure a human. An interesting fact bout jellyfish is that they do not actually have a brain! They simply float along and the food kills itself.

I understand most of the concepts this chapter, but I need to work on my vocab and some of the information. I also need to get my Science Olympiad stuff together. I am building a home made hydrometer/salinometer.

We did a lab using the microscope. We viewed sponge and Hydra parts under the microscope. On Monday, apparently we are going to abuse a living hydra cnidarian and try to make it sting something. Oh boy! I feel bad for the little guy. Haha. We are not going to actually abuse it. Just poke it a little. I don't really know how well the bio-dome lab is doing. Lat I checked, the egg sacs were developing nicely. Thanks for reading. Be back next week!

Hello everyone. This week was pretty interesting. I turned in my plant tissue lab that wee started two weeks ago before the snow days. We also did another lab called the flower dissection lab. It taught us about the male and female reproductive parts of the flower. The plant tissue lab wasn't that interesting to me because I wasn't there for the microscope part of the lab. I hate being sick. I really do. I am now going to start taking in more antioxidants to boost my immune system. It's a really good thing that I like blueberries. We also took a test  on the plants. I got had one of the best grades in the middle school. I got a 96%! I am proud of that. I know my blogs the last few weeks have been short and boring but there haven't been too many labs to talk about that you guys can do at home. The whole school has been set back because of that stupid ice storm, and now we have to make up days, which I am really not going to enjoy. We had a ton of work to do over that 'break' and we still have to make up a few days at the end of the year.
We did fun projects on Friday. We made fake 'snow' that is actually made up of a water absorbing polymers. It started out as a light coating of dust at the bottom of a cup that as soon as wee added water, poofed up. It was really cool. We are also growing crystals out on pipe cleaners. The crystals are made up of borax, which is used in laundry detergents. As the water evaporates, crystals form on the pipe cleaner. We twisted the pipe cleaners to look like snowflakes, and at the end of the lab, they should look like the picture on the left.

Wow guys1 what a week! I was out Monday for because I was sick. Then school was canceled because of a sheet of ice on the roads. It was super dangerous to go places because of the ice patches. Plus nobody here is used to snow, or for that matter ice. I really need to study for a couple of tests that were rescheduled because of the snow storm. Math science and spanish tests, oh my! I chilled this week and worked on a couple of projects. Hope you guys have had a good week and weekend. Stay safe!