I think that overall science class this year had so many fun and informal classes that really helped me learn and understand science. I really enjoyed playing dam it, and during my playing it I learned more about floods and rivers. Some of my favorite things that we did in science were: biomes, I really liked learning about biomes because I not only learned a lot about what biome I studied, but the biomes that my friends studied as well. I liked it when we went on a walk and drew trees that were just beginning to rot all the way through to the piles of dirt that they ended up turning into. Doing both the alka seltzer and water rockets was really fun as well. When we dug through owl pellets and pasted the bones we found on paper to create our own creatures it was really gross and fun at the same time! It was also fun when we wrote letters to Miss Cuttatree about the owls we picked. One of my very favorite things was learning about matter! I loved all of the mysteries we had to solve and learning about how D = Mass/Volume (ass over olume 😉)! I especially liked learning about matter because we got to do some of the most hands on projects ever and that really helped me learn a lot, it made everything make so much more sense.

The Science Expo was also really fun! I learned a lot about Rachel Carson and all of the things that she did for our environment. Plus, I also really liked learning about the people that my classmates studied (it was also really fun dressing up). The trash unit was really fun because we got to learn about the influence that garbage has on our planet and how to prevent any more damage. Now, there are some things that I really want to do more of: Matter, as well as the Periodic Table. I loved learning about the periodic table and how mind blowing it is. I am currently enjoying our constellation project as well.Are there more elements out there that are just waiting to be discovered? What could we have done if we had the extra time that was lost during the Polar Vortex? What more is there to learn about matter that you could teach me, Shane?

Thank you, Shane, for an amazing year in science!

Because I wrote about how I researched Rachel Carson last week, I will now write about her life. She was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania on May 27, 1907. She was loved by her mother who would take on walks and teach her how to identify plant and bird species. While she was in college she changed her major from English to Biology after falling in love with it in Mary Skinker’s class. After she attended college at The Pennsylvania College for Women, she wrote one book about the sea by the name of Under The Sea-Wind. She later moved to Maine after falling in love with the ocean. She later wrote two more books about the sea by the names of: The Sea Around Us and The Edge Of The Sea.

She became good friends with Dorothy Freeman. Later they would end up writing love letters to each other. With the ending of WWII DDT was a new and ‘Amazing’ substance for killing unwanted pests. At this point in time humans felt that they could control nature. Rachel thought that this was terrible and saw the obvious destruction to our environment, so she wrote a book named Silent Spring and changed our thoughts on our environment. This later led to the ban of DDT and the Environmental Movement. She died April 14, 1964 because of breast cancer. What would her reaction be to the ban of DDT? What could the doctor who diagnosed her with breast cancer have done better? How did she persist even with large chemical companies trying to silence her?