22 Aug: First class, microscope, worms

Well, I think that went reasonably well. The K class seems to be about as eager and excited and friendly a batch of li'l angels as anybody could ask for. I introduced them to the Question Box. If you have questions, any science questions, at any time, sez I, you write them down and put them in the box.

But I don't know how to write! says one very frank boy.

You will, startlingly soon, says the silent internal answer. Out loud, I said, "in that case, you simply ask for help from a teacher".

Last year's microscope has moved to the K class. For the 1st/2nd grade we have a new used microscope with a little wheel you turn to flip thru several power settings. It goes from about 4x up to 56x in a five settings. Not quite a zoom, but pretty nifty nevertheless. Both classes got a bit of focussing practice. I can point my digital camera at the microscope, and then run a USB::RCA wire from the camera to a TV set, and so everybody can see the microscope image at the same time, while a helpful volunteer twiddles the knob and we see the image improve from this



to this



I brought in a bunch of worms from my Can-o-worms ™ worm composting habitat. One of the worms is spending the week in the K classroom, where we are watching to see if he will devour the bit of newspaper I put in with him (my home worms eat quite a lot of newspaper as well as egg cartons and kitchen scraps).