So now all of you have attended at least one Nature Night. This one however was a more spread out and had much nicer weather. I was once again very impressed with your level of involvement and dedication to increasing outdoor awareness in young children and parents. WAY TO GO SOUTHWEST!!!! Also a shout out to Northstar and their work with the NRD stations.
Once again I am asking you to reflect on the evening. No other guidance will be provided other than be honest, exact and speak from the heart.
SECONDLY: Explain your microbe experiment with oil. You will be publishing your results on this blog later.
Mr. Bittle
Microbe experiment is progressing nicely. The group is observing the changes between the penicillin growth in both used and synthetic organisms in a variety of wet and dry environments. The samples are kept in an incubator to accelerate bacterial growth as in real world conditions.
ReplyDeleteNature Night was very fun. There were alot of people there. My station was set outside, and it was nice out. Bug Hunting i thought was a big hit because i was busy like all the time explaining, and showing kids the bugs , and showing them how to make there own. It was also challenging because my partner didnt show up so i was a one man group. Also my supplies went low so i had to find out a way to make them last. And i changed the way the kids made the bugs.Other then that nature night was fun. i liked being outside, and showing the kids the bugs. The mosquitioes were very annoying but i got through it. I liked explaining the bugs you could find outside. There was even this weird guy named Charles Bittle who came and tried making a bug, he failed but his daughters did pretty good.All and all it was a good time.
ReplyDeleteOur experiment on our microbes are doing very well. We have bacteria growing in all our petri dishes. The bacteria is breaking down all the oil.All we can do now is keep up the temperature so more bacteria grows and wait and see how long it takes before it degredes all the oil
I thought that it was a little stressing when a lot of kids just showed up at ones and everyone of them was talking and asking for chalk. Some kids were bad they just wanted to get what they wanted.Then some little kid started crying because he couldn't find his mom so i had t take him to her.Than our table was messy there was powder every were and water and then some of the kids got messy. some little kid that was their was even eating his chalk. he thought it was candy or something.Besides that it went great. It s a great experience for me and i had fun. I liked working with kids and well i hope that i could do this again. - Genesis F.
ReplyDeleteMy group's microbe experiment with oil is intended to see if synthetic oil or used oil will degrade faster when exposed to penicillin. We are using distilled water and sand, and then adding a pinch of fertilizer to each and around 16 drops of synthetic or used oil. So far it seems that the synthetic oil is degrading faster, because we have seen the most growths in those dishes. However, our experiment isn't finished, so these results are still tentative.
ReplyDeleteMicrobes:
ReplyDeleteOur experiment with microbes, is going well. We are testing if salt water or freshwater have naturally occurring microbes that decompose oil. The salt water is from the tank with the puffer fish. One of the salt water dishes has live sand in it with fertilizer to boost the growth of the microbes, while the other salt water dish has just salt water with fertilizer. The freshwater and mud are from the outdoor classroom's pond. One of the freshwater dishes is just the water with oil and fertilizer. This dish is doing well. The other freshwater dish has mud from the outdoor classroom. This dish is growing very well. We will continue to record our data everyday and see how the oil is decomposed and how/if the microbes have grown.
Tony
Our experiment is seeing how saltwater breaks down oil. So far it's breaking down the oil. Our control has been growing something in it though which means it's not clean. Over all I would say that our water is doing pretty good with the oil in it.
ReplyDeleteIts good to hear that Alex has a good time at nature night. I'm glad the kids liked the bugs...well what kids wouldn't. It was smart to change the way he made the bugs to save supplies. GOOD JOB!
Microbe Lab:
ReplyDeleteOur Microbe Lab is testing whether or not salt water and fresh water systems have natural microbes to break down the oil. To investigate this we are setting up an experiment to see if our natural pond outside and saltwater tank have these microbes. We have a control of saltwater and freshwater so we can compare it with the other dishes. Once dish has just saltwater, while another has saltwater and the live sand. Both of which have fertilizer and oil in them to see if natural microbes exist in our tank. The other set has one with just freshwater and one with freshwater and the sediment at the bottom of the pond, both again which have oil and fertilizer as well.
~Haley
Nature night was a lot of fun once again! I am really glad i was able to go to both of them because they had a lot of different stuff. The nature night at Everett was a lot more open because we were allowed to go outside also. I feel like there wasn't as many kids there, but the ones that were there really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI did Barefoot hiking again with Felicia and Kayla. We used most of the same supplies except we did not have fungus this time. Instead of having individual piles of grass, rocks, bark, moss, and sandstone we made it into a path that the kids walked along. I liked this a lot more and feel like it worked out a lot better. One girl even used it as a runway and pretended she was a model. We had one or two parents that joined in with their kids and the ones that did really enjoyed it.
My microbe experiment is going really well. We did freshwater with no mud, saltwater with no sand, freshwater with mud, and saltwater with sand. we put oil in all of them and have been taking pictures of each everyday. We have realized that the freshwater with mud is doing the best because there was already bacteria in there.
I liked this nature night a lot better than the first one. It was more spread out and I liked how the kids got to go outside this time. The only bad part about going outside was that I was getting bit up even when I was inside. I did barefoot hiking and I thought it went a lot smoother because we have done it before. We were trying to get rid of the paper handouts so I just went behind them and put it in their bags. I also did trash art and I made Felicia and Jenna faces of them. They were so cute and they loved them!
ReplyDeleteAs for my microbe experiment with oil, we used freshwater and saltwater to make our observations. In two of them we had one with freshwater and saltwater with just oil in them. They look similar to the ones with distilled water. We also put soil with the freshwater and live sand with the saltwater both having oil in them. I can see fungus with the soil and freshwater. It is very clumpy. As for the saltwater and live sand the water just looks cloudy and really no change.
From what I've seen from other comments so far, it seems that some aspects of the Nature Night at Everett were more challenging than the Nature Night I attended at Hartley. Luckily, most of the children I interacted with behaved wonderfully and didn't overwhelm us. It's great to see so many people participating in Nature Night because it is such an enriching experience, both for the presenters and the participants. If I had more time, I would attend every Nature Night, because it was just that great!
ReplyDeleteAttending nature nights was a great experience for me to work with kids, in showing them how to make sidewalk chalk. I was very excited in attending nature nights. This was a great way to get kids involved in outdoor activities then just being stuck indoors. There was hardly a break for me because kids kept coming. They were all excited to make chalk even some parents were involved in making it too. Towards the end of nature nights I was starting to get exhausted but it was all worth doing. I did have a little problem with making chalk. There would be some points where I didn’t add much water and the kids would struggle to mix the plaster. But I got the hang of things and after awhile I added the right amount of water. We also had another problem, a kid was lost and began to cry by our table. He was lost but we were able to find his mother. I had a great time at nature nights and it was worth doing.
ReplyDeleteThis was my first nature night and i didn't really know what to expect from it, when we first got there what i noticed was that the stations were very spread out and there was a lot more than i thought there was going to be. Once people started showing up i was surprised on how many people came, and it was definitely a different environment than what you would typically see at Southwest. But there was a good variety of people and different stations.
ReplyDeleteI think that the kids learned a lot about their environment and how to take care of things that they may encounter on a daily basis. My group personally taught the children about turtles and how to take care of them if they were to find one in the environment, and most of the children explained to us that they wanted to get a turtle or they had had one before and it ha died because they were not sure how to take care of it, so i'm glad we decided to teach about turtles because hopefully they will know how to take care of them now.
Microbe Results:
> We are doing an experiment where we put used oil into one thing of sand and water and then synthetic oil into the other sand and water container and then the control water and sand.
What we have observed:
> The synthetic oil has a ton of growths throughout it and the used oil doesn't seem to have any at all.
> The used oil seems to be effecting the sand more then the synthetic oil does.
> There are a lot of growths in a few of the containers and i am interested to see what else comes from this experiment.
In the Microbe experiment my group decided to see if the salt water and live sand from our saltwater tank in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteSo far we have had interesting results.
The plain sand (that's sterile) hasn't done anything, which is normal, BUT the live gravel/sand HAS done quite a bit. In the shoreline with live gravel/sand we have seen the oil become an odd milky-yellow with a thicker consistency and the oil in the coastline (live gravel/sand+saltwater) the amount of oil actually appears to be less.
Our open water also has some-sort of sediment accumulating and it could be dead cells of bacteria that are breaking down the oil on the surface then dying and sinking to the bottom. The oil is also a milky color in that dish too.
As for nature night...
Wow, I feel really sorry for you guys that had to deal with the lost kid. And I do know how that feels when the kids that come to your station are just being jerks and taking what they want. My group was lucky to only have one ill-behaved child visit our table when we did it at Hartley. Everett's area IS extremely different than what all of us are used to. My mom used to teach there and there's some shady people around there. If you can get to the kids when they're young though you can make a HUGE difference.
Nature night was a really cool experience. The kids were great and fun to talk to. They were really interested in how to make a picnic which was exciting for us! We asked kids if they had ever been on a picnic, and most of them said no, so it was great to have them learning about getting outside. The parents also got involved with their kids to make their picnic so I hope they took something away too.
ReplyDeleteThere was a third grader who came over cause she wanted to be our helper which was really cute. She helped other kids make their picnics in sacks and then started telling people what picnics were. It was so sweet to see her being involved and helping other families at the station.
I wasn't expecting so many kids but I was glad they all could come. We almost ran out of food so that was good so many families came. It was cool to hear about how fun the other stations were from the kids. I'm glad they liked all the stations!
For our experiment, we redid the experiment just like before but added three different soils into the beakers. The soils have oil in it so we are seeing how it reacts.
The microbe experiment is so far pretty interesting. The one to been breaking down the oil the best in our experiment is the mud of the freshwater. You are not able to see or detect any oil, but the water is a nasty gray color. The next solution to be breaking down the oil is the regular freshwater.
ReplyDeleteThe Freshwater seems to be working a lot better then the salt water. I think the freshwater has a lot more bacteria and especially the mud of the freshwater. The regular salt water and the salt water with rocks really has done a lot until now (day 7).
After reading a few of the comments of people that attended Nature Night, it sounds like it went well. Being able to go outside and being more spread out would be a great advantage compared to all being in a gym. It sounds like the kids had a ton of fun
ReplyDeleteTony
Our groups experiment tests the effectiveness of saltwater and shorelines and how well they break down water. For some reason all of our petri dishes have degraded the oil which means somethings wrong with our control dishes but its working out.
ReplyDeleteYeah Alex that Charles Bittle guy sounds like a total creeper. I mean what kind of grown man makes a bug? Weird, but all in all it sounded like a fun nature night!
So reading through all the comments and looking at the pictures nature night looks like it was a lot of fun. Lucky for you guys it was not pouring rain and you weren't stuffed in a little gym, so you had room and time between people. It was a good mix of things for kids to learn and experience and i bet they had fun. I wish we would've done our booth there as well. Great job everyone :)
ReplyDelete~Haley
I think the second nature night was an astounding success! Having experience with one night already, people know what to expect. Also, since there was not a major storm, the attendance was much greater presumably. Hopefully, the children learned to have fun and be eco conscious at the same time. There is also a great number of fun games like catching bugs and making chalk. Sounds like the kids had a great time!
ReplyDeleteAt this nature night, there wasn't as many people there. I figured since it was nicer weather more people would attend. But it was total opposite have the time you would just sit or stand. During the first half i was doing the trash art and it was really crowded and overwhelming i felt bad because i couldn't help all the kids because it was just be running it. Then for the rest i went to barefoot hiking where not a lot was going on. This time we actually handed out the information sheets to the kids. Our trail for it was a lot more better and more presentable. We made it like an actual trail, the kids enjoyed that. Even though it was a lot more messy it still was fun. I think they would have enjoyed it if there was more moss because it kept on mixing in with the grass and rocks. The moss also got harder so it wasn't as soft.
ReplyDeleteFor the microbe the soil with fresh water and oil is nasty looking. it looks like something is growing on it. As for the fresh water and salt water there really isn't much of a difference. It slowly looks different but not to much.
On our oil experiment we gathered different types of soil that had oil in it then we added some fertilizer to it. the ones with the water started to get nasty and it started changing. The shore line was the one that was changing. The water turned to a different color and had some like foam in it as well. -Genesis F.R
ReplyDeletein our experiment we used different types of soil that had a mixture of oil and fertilizer. the shoreline mixture was the one that got my attention because it had a very bad smell from all the oil and soil being mixed into it. there are changes to the others. some seem cloudy and the one with soil and sand added has really no change to it. to me it seems the same.
ReplyDeleteNature Night was pretty crazy, there were so many kids and families there and it was overall a really good time. We did a picnic station where kids could learn how to have a picnic and pack there own picnic. Things went pretty good we were handing out picnic checklists to parents and teaching kids about picnics, and telling them that picnics are a fun way to spend time outside and in nature. But we got some big rushes of kids, and it was hard to keep enough food out on the table for them to pack and so we were rushing and making sandwiches and cutting apples, while still trying to help the kids and teach them about having picnics which was a struggle, but I think we got the message across.
ReplyDeleteSome parents would ask me to make them a whole sandwich and it was awkward because I felt like I was working at Mr.Goodcents or something. But I'm glad there were so many families that came and I could tell the kids were getting into nature which was awesome to see.
For our microbe experiment with oil, we are doing almost the same experiment as before but instead of adding the bacteria and penicillin we added 3 different samples of soil with oil in it too all of the beakers.
Brynn
I'm part of the barefoot hiking however I was unable to attend this nature night. My group made the path which sounds to be better then having the stuff grouped together. It still sounds like not a lot pf parents were interested in walking on the path but that's okay. I wish I would've been able to make it to this nature night.
ReplyDeleteSubject Standards on Scientific paper
ReplyDeleteMr. Bittle i would just like to say, after doing the bioassay paper. I learned alot about the results of the experiment and what really was going on. It may be alot of work but it is deffinetely woth doing.