Soos Creek Salmon Hatchery

What better way to understand the life cycle of a salmon than to actually see it in action - and in our own backyard, no less! We had a neat tour of the hatchery, saw the eggs being incubated (even held a few - thanks Mr. Gary!), fed the fry, walked along the stream cheering on the struggling Coho, and even watched a few salmon jump up the fish ladder. Fascinating!

Next up ... Life Cycles!

This week, we watched some excerpts of a PBS "Nature" Episode on American Bald Eagles called "Bringing Up Birdy," looking at the life stages of eagles as a model of the avian life cycle. The images of the experienced father eagle carefully folding in his talons so as not to damage the egg charmed everyone as much as the fuzzy baby eaglets that emerged, and the clown-like first flights and crash landings of the young fledglings had us all in stitches. For the full episode, check out: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/featured/american-eagle-video-full-episode/4349/

Create Your Own Animal Project

To cap the part of our Animal Science unit covering Taxonomy, we created and classified our own animals, first sketching them and then rendering them in sculptures made of recycled materials. Here are our AMAZING animals!