co-evolution

It was my birthday, and I got to pretend. It was a lot of fun. It was difficult however, because I had to be a knife beaked bird. This activity demonstrated natural selection because we had three different types of bird beaks fighting for different types of food. We had knives, forks, and spoons. Hearing that I was a knife I knew how hard I would have to fight to survive.
This activity demonstrated natural selection because over generations the number of my fellow knives diminished while the other populations flourished. Another natural selection occurred with the food available. The split peas grew large numbers, while the pasta shrunk.  This brought up the fact that the more easily it can be attained the easier it may be wiped out. This made me think of protection factors. The split peas protection was the difficulty of attainability.
This activity demonstrated co-evolution because as one type of beak went up, so did a type of food. the prefered food seemed to have been the noodles, because they were the easiest to obtain. The split peas were the item that got to expand as not many of them were being eaten. spoons were the most successful because they were able to pick up the most food. My food was difficult to obtain because all I could do was was fling my food in the air and try to catch it when I was left by myself.
When I was able to work with others we worked together one person pushing the food onto the others "beak". I felt it was easier to work alone, as I was able to obtain more food that way. If we had had more time to talk before the food scramble we could have made a better strategy for working together. This could be similar to an occurrence in nature. some creatures find working together to be the answer, others working alone. This also goes along with natural selection.
Overall I enjoyed this activity. I have done similar activities before in my science courses. I was reminded especially of my 7th grade science class. We instead had to pick from a variety of tools or utensils as our beak, and then went through a bunch of stations. We saw that some situations our beaks were evolved to fit, in others, not so much. to return to the point, this was an interesting activity that provided a hands on representation of the study at hand. I really enjoyed it.

my bottle habitat

what do I call this little picture of life? My bottle habitat was something I was very excited about. One problem was I never got it to fully stay sealed. I guess I would name my bottle habitat the broken garden. It offers a bit of peace, a reminder of the green warmer times, but it has its broken zones.
I loved how it can survive over this three month period without any maintenance.

My habitat is a base pond with some vine like structures in the upper bottle with a moss side zone.
I am surprised that with the little amount of sunlight my bottle received that it was still able to have a proper photosynthesis cycle. My plants don't seem to have grown any bigger, all they have done is survive.
I don't understand how it can survive all I know is that it has. I love plants, and I cant wait to try this with my students someday. Plants have always been an interest for me. plant life reminds me of grandmas house, she has 4 huge gardens within her yard, as well as her own greenhouse attached to the back of the house. My bottle habitat is essentially a mini-version of this greenhouse. All I can say is I love plants!

new outdoor adventure!

My winter adventure. It was crazy, all this snow in one night! It started as a risky ride trying to get back to my apartment. I finally made it after a 10 minute drive turned into 50 minute drive. I thought to myself there is absolutely no way that I am going out  int hat again. And then, the next day we had a snow day. Downstate my family was enjoying the lovely fall weather meanwhile I'm freezing and trying to figure out how to survive this snow-in with only a small stock of food. So I was stuck, nothing to do on the inside, so I decided to take advantage of this winter wonderland and went to play outside.
My dad built me snowshoes, I had never tried snowshoeing before. walking out the door was like getting blasted in the face with a polar vortex. I guess thats what the weathermen would call it anyway. My first attempts at walking above the snow were very wobbly and unstable. It felt like I was learning to walk again for the first time. there is a certain art to snowshoes. There is a lovely little hill right behind my apartment that I decided to tackle.

The weather was scary to say the least. I felt like an arctic explorer all bundled up in about ten layers of clothes. I gave up on the snowshoes after I tumbled down filling my face with a  wonderful bunch of snow. So instead I built a snowman. Being outside in the snow is so wonderful. I love winter. I hate driving in it, but I love exploring using my own two legs and eyes. If it hadn't been so difficult to get out I would have gone even farther. I will never forget this wonderful double snowday.