Kerry's blog

Last Saturday, the C3 teens participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count.  The GBBC is a nationwide program held over one weekend in February each year in which thousands of people across the country go outside, count birds, and then report their results to the Audubon Society and Cornell University.  The GBBC is a major source of data for scientists studying birds.  The C3 teens counted 9 different species in Forest Park.  Here are some pics:

    

Today we painted bird houses.  Next week we will fill them with bird seed and hang them up outside the Taylor building.  Some teens made extras so they could bring a bird house home.  All of them are really colorful!

All the teens did a great job today taking care of their animals.  Some of the newer teens picked their animals up for the first time.  Everyone also learned how to use  calipers to measure their animal's length and balances to measure the animal's weight.  The teens are making great observations in their science journals.

Last Saturday, the C3 component continued work on our posters.  Each teen is making a poster of her or his animal to display in the room.  Then, when other groups come to the Taylor building, they can read info. about the animals and then look around the room to try and find each one.  The posters are turning out really great--Chastity brought bubble letters to make them stand out, and teens are also using special scissors to make cool edges around the text.

Teens also took care of their animals and made observations.  That can take quite a while.  We also discussed setting up a new experiment to see if caterpillars will go through metamorphosis faster if they are under a heat lamp.  We will have to measure the caterpillars next week.

Today was our first day back in the lab after break.  Everybody had to get back into the swing of taking care of their animals.  It was an interesting experience for some new component members!  We also researched our animals, so we can eventually make posters to hang up in our room.  Finally, we watched a slide show about the C3 project.  It was made by Cornell University, and we can use it when we talk about our project to other groups.

Last Saturday, the C3 teens participated in a computer game about climate change.  It was called Clim'city, and it was sort of like Sim City.  Instead of building your own city, you had 50 years to make a city more efficient.  The game took 4 hours!  But most of the teens got it done, and then we sent our scores to ASTC.  Our scores, along with those of 6 other teen groups, will be part of a presentation at the climate change talks in Copenhagen.  The game is designed to get people to think about all the ways we can combat climate change, but it also shows how complex and difficult the situation is.  The game can be found at:

http://climcity.cap-sciences.net/us/inscription.php

This past Saturday, the C3 and Science Corner teens took a trip to an ecovillage in the Central West End.  The people there live on a large campus and share everything.  They also grow a lot of their own food, compost their trash, and use geothermal heating to help the environment.  We took a tour and then ate a vegetarian lunch.  Here are some pictures.

                

Last Saturday, we spent the first part of our science time taking care of our animals and making observations about them in our science journals.  We also got binoculars to do our bird watching for Cornell.  We didn't see any birds around our birdfeeders, though, and we only saw starlings in the distance.

 The second part of the day was spent researching the animals we have in the room.  Eventually, we will have a poster about each animal so that visitors can find out more information when they see our reptiles and amphibians.