8th - Harper's Blog

The past couple weeks we’ve been working on a project called “Your Brain on Drugs” we all chose a common addiction and have to learn about it and make a presentation about it, such as drugs, alcohol and social media. I chose to do my presentation on Xanax. Taking Xanax will cause a feeling of relaxation or calmness, so it is often prescribed for those with anxiety or stress. However, taking too much Xanax can cause side effects such as memory loss, tiredness, dizziness, lack of focus, poor balance and insomnia. A couple of street names for Xanax are; bars, bricks, blue footballs, xanny and yellow school bus. Xanax is illegal without prescription but unfortunately that doesn’t mean that it’s very difficult to find. Try to avoid Xanax if it’s not prescribed to you. 🙂

 

In a study conducted in 1998 you could find 6,000 axolotl per square kilometre in Xochimilco, which is located in south Mexico city. In 2008 you could find 100. Currently, due to invasive predators and pollution you can find less than 35. The axolotls are on the brink of extinction in the canals of Mexico City, which is their only natural habitat. However, in aquariums and science labs across the world thousands more can be found. Also in Japan axolotls are constantly  bred to be served deep-fried in restaurants. All that remains of the axolotl’s habitat in Xochimilco are about 170 kilometres of criss-crossing canals.

Questions:

1. How can we save the axolotls?
2. Can they be moved to a different habitat?
3. Should eating them be extinct?

Last week we were assigned a project on google slides, it was about different parts of the body. Shane created separate slides for us to do our work on, there were about ten slides that all had a body part on them that we had to define. some of them were tendons, tissues, joints and organs. There were others too but those are some I can remember. One thing that definitely slowed me down on this project was listing my sources, I kept forgetting and having to go back through my search history to find the websites I used… hopefully I’ll start remembering to do that.

Questions:

How long will we be working on skeletons?

Sorry, that’s the only question I can think of.

 

Today during class we worked on our projects for learning the human body (bones, muscles, etc.) The first step is to cut out our bones templates, then we take a big piece of paper and glue on our skeletons. After that’s done we start cutting out muscles, the thing about the muscles is that they’re freehanded, so they might not all look like muscles. Anyways, we cover one side of our skeletons with the muscles we cut out and then start with the fabric. The fabric is for finally giving our poor skeleton people some clothes. But since the fabric has been put away in the classroom for a while, it sounds like there might be mice living in it… kind of worried about that part.

Questions:

Do we have to label the muscles/bones?

How long has Pathfinder done this?

 

This week we worked on making wooden chairs. It’s a project that eighth grade usually works on, but because we have to do most of our classes outside now, the seventh graders are making them too. The idea is to take a wooden board and cut it so it has pieces that fit together like a rotated “L” shape. We had to cut the wood using a jigsaw, I’m not afraid of power tools themselves I’m just afraid of myself using them. Thankfully I didn’t kill anybody. Anyways, last class I started working on painting the base coat, which is a teal-ish color. The only bad thing about painting is that the paint that we’re using, while it sticks well to the wood, doesn’t come off if you get it on your clothes, so we have to be kind of careful. We had to take them inside when class was over, because it was supposed to rain, but they were still wet so there’s probably going to be a super strong smell of paint when we go to get them.

 

Questions:

Where will we keep these?

How much longer do we have to work on them?

How long has Pathfinder done this?

For this “social media post” I’m going to be writing as a fruit fly…

“Hello! My name is Julia, and I’m a fruit fly. You’ve probably seen one of my kind before (most likely eating the food that you leave on the counter) and you might think of us as pests, but, we are very helpful. For example, lot’s of animals like to eat us, such as spiders, dragonflies and even small birds. Yeah, we’re terrified of birds… Anyways, You’ll usually find us in the spring and fall, just because of the weather. As you probably guessed by my name I am an extreme fruit fan. I particularly like overripe fruit and vegetables, which is why you see me in your kitchen this time of year. Just today I was in a old woman’s kitchen and she started trying to murder me, for some reason. Thankfully she didn’t succeed.”

This time my “social media post” will be about a certain honey bee named Lacey…

“Hello, my name is Lacey and I’m a honey bee. Basically, I work 24hrs a day 7 days a week 365 days a year until I die. The way our queen describes it is “we pollinate the food, so the humans can eat it, we pollinate the flowers so the humans are happy and we make honey because that is our job.” Personally i think the human should take care of themselves but apparently they can’t. Pathetic. Anyways, today I went to the apple orchard with a few other bees and pollinated some of the saplings, and can you believe it the younger humans got scared and the older humans chased us away for pollinating their trees! So we moved on to the sunflowers on a farm not far from our hive. After we were done we started to go back to our hive, where we found a bear. This was bad. Bears are horrible creatures that destroy our homes and eat our honey, and this one wasn’t any better. Now, without a hive, the colony and I started our journey to find a new home.”

 

Today shane asked us to create a “social media post” written by an insect, so this is now a water bug speaking…

“Hello everyone! My name is Sherral, and I’m a water bug. Today I decided to drift downstream aways until I got into the swampy area of the river. I like going there because that’s where most of the flies gather, (best diner I’ve ever been to). After lunch the wind picked up so the current got a little stronger, usually I would have been pushed far down the river but today I got suck on a branch that had fallen a few days ago. Once the wind had stopped I swam back home. Unfortunately, after I got home a group of small children started running towards my river! They lifted up my family, put them in jars and started a water bug massacre! But overall it was a pretty normal day. It’s difficult being a water bug!”

For this blog we were supposed to write as ourselves in eight years talking about the COVID-19… so here we go

“The corona virus was certainly terrifying for everyone around it. We couldn’t see people without a face mask, every store ran out of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, and, all non-essential buildings were shut down, including schools! I personally was upset because my family didn’t go on a vacation that winter so we could have a really nice vacation that spring. But because of the COVID-19 we had to cancel our plans! We also had to do all of our schooling online, which was very difficult to figure out. Fortunately a giant anteater came out of the lake and ate all of the people with Corona, leaving earth with no trace of the COVID-19.”

 

Our latest science project was on water. I chose to make my presentation on plastic pollution. Unfortunately I missed the zoom class this morning and didn’t see what other people worked on… but I bet it was great! My slideshow mainly focused on plastic water bottles (which are terrible for the environment by the way) and how water pollution affects animals (such as sea turtles, seagulls, pelicans, dolphins, sea lions, manatees, etc.) It ended with me providing links to alternatives for plastic water bottles, bags and straws. Anyway, if you want to look at it (you don’t have to, just so you can) here’s the link!

Questions:

1. Why did people invent plastic water bottles?
2. How many animals die a year from plastic pollution?
3. Are some animals not affected by plastic?