Little scientists at Lincoln Elementary - East Idaho News
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Little scientists at Lincoln Elementary

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(Courtesy Rexburg Standard Journal)

REXBURG — The Lincoln Elementary School library was full of scientists Thursday, examining the tiny skulls and skeletons of rodents and birds.

The best part? Those scientists were third- and fourth-graders.

This activity was the last after-school science session for the year at Lincoln Elementary, news that made the students say, “Aw,” and “So sad.” But second grade teacher Tammy Ott said they will do it again next year.

About 24 children attended that session, and about 10 of them were girls. Two girls, Katelyn Parson and Ayla Prince, told the Standard Journal they want to be scientists one day.One wants to be a scientist who does cooking experiments and the other wants to discover new things on planets.

Ott asked the students what their favorite things about the after-school science program were this year. “I liked mostly all of them,” one girl said.

Another child’s favorite activity was making crystals, and another one said his favorite thing was making ice cream. “I made them at my house and I turned them into smoothies,” he said. “And I added more sugar to make them taste better.”

Ayla said it was cool to see how just those ingredients could combine to become ice cream.One boy said his favorite was learning about aerodynamics because he wants to use them to make humans fly.

“My favorite was learning about aerodynamics so I can maybe try to put that into a human so I would be the first person to fly without an airplane,” he said.

Another boy pitched in and told him this has already been done. He said he’d seen on TV that inventors have created flying suits and jetpacks.“I found it out on a TV show, and one of them has made a flying jet pack and one has made an inflating suit,” he said.

BYU-Idaho student Angie Rogers provided the children about owls and their digestive systems.During the lesson, Rogers asked what the kids knew about owls. One child said they can turn their heads around all the way, and Rogers taught that owls’ eyes don’t see side to side like humans’ do, and that’s why they turn their heads around so far.

“Owls are heroes,” one child told the student next to her.

The class talked about what owls eat, food chains, how owl pellets are formed and what owl pellets are like. Ott said the owl pellets they would dissect were sanitized in a lab before they received them. Everyone got to dissect their own, using pointy wooden sticks.

“They are not to be used as swords,” Rogers said.

In the library the teachers gave specific directions, telling the kids to tape the bones they found onto a paper that showed pictures of the different bone types. Some children thought the pellets were disgusting, but mostly they were excitedly showing their findings to anyone who would pay attention.

One boy said he found four skulls in his pellet. Ott said one reason they chose this project for the science club was because of the stuffed owls on display in the Lincoln library.

The teachers showed these to the students, explaining that the larger one was a Great Horned Owl and the other was a Barn Owl. Ott said humans had not killed either of the birds; they were found after the birds died on their own.The students would later add their findings to their Lincoln Science Club journals, which will go into a contest for a $5 Walmart gift card to the most accurate and organized journal. This is to encourage them to do their best work, according to Ott.

This project and previous ones, including the ZOOB building project, ice cream making and magnets, were made possible with help from Dr. Van Christman, the dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at BYU-Idaho.

Christman’s science methods have helped students with activities, and Christman has a budget to supply the necessary funds for each week’s activities at Lincoln. Ott said that because of this, all the activities only cost the school about $130, even with the ZOOB kits alone costing $500 each.

This article was written by Rexburg Standard Journal Reporter Amanda Hill. It is used here with permission. View the original article here.

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