Fossil?

Today the scientists of Lab 204 looked at some rock samples. Each rock was different, and we noticed many details and had many questions we were wondering about.

One rock had what looked like a mark on it. Some people thought that mark was a leaf fossil, or a leaf print, or even a tire track left by a car or bicycle.

We had a science discussion about this rock. We agreed that it was probably from a plant, and that the plant looked a lot like some evergreen leaves we had looked at earlier in the week. We had some lingering questions, though:
- How could someone find this rock if it was made before people were on the Earth?
- Was it made by sand piling on top of other sand, with a leaf stuck in between?
- Is this a print of a leaf, or something else, like a leaf fossil?

In the science unit we are starting, we will be exploring rocks, water, and how the Earth changes over time. We will get to the idea of fossils and other evidence that scientists have about the ancient Earth, but not for a while!

Bean Harvest

Here are some more pictures from our bean and tomato harvest. Here, we were looking at the tomatoes before we pulled the vine from the ground.

1, 2, 3, PULL!

 

A Visit to the Garden

On Friday, our class visited the Lowell Learning Garden. We helped to harvest two kinds of vegetables: tomatoes and beans.

We picked two kinds of beans, purple beans and rattlesnake beans. We will let these beans dry in our classroom over the next week, and then we will take them out of the shell. When they are dry, they can be stored to cook with or to plant again in the spring.

We also picked Pink Brandywine tomatoes, a very old variety that you cannot buy in the grocery store. We learned that you can pick green tomatoes, and hang them upside down to ripen to red! Our tomatoes are hanging in our classroom, slowly turning red.

We worked with a gardener named Victoria who was very helpful in teaching us about the garden and these plants. Thank you, Victoria!

We make careful scientific observational drawings of our vegetables. We added labels to show which parts were which.