Seymour Science Day

Seymour Science Day was this past Saturday, and wow, what a day! The Three Rivers Foundation brought everything from turtles, to bird seed garden kits, to meteorites to telescopes and even a cool game that let you build your own bracelet while learning about the water cycle. The Houston Museum of Natural Science was there too, with fossils, kites, coloring contests and yes - even bugs.......to eat!! A special thanks go to our student volunteers who put in a lot of hours to make this whole program work. Your hard work is deeply appreciated and you did such a great job!!

The only thing that could have made the day better was if the sky had cleared up in time for a star party, but don't worry, we'll have another one soon.

Here are some pics from our busy day that you might like. And I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted - so let's have a good, restful Spring Break! It got kicked off to a great start!

Do Something

The last few chapters in our Biology book have made us very aware of some of the difficult issues (like acid rain, ozone depletion, global warming, chemical pollution, loss of resources and population growth) we face on our planet that will have to be addressed if we are going to be able to keep Earth so that it can sustain our growing population.

Believe it or not, as big as these issues are, there are actually a lot of things you can do to start working toward our new goals of protecting our life on this planet. If you will look over to the right hand menu over there, you will see a new "widget" called the "Act Now Matrix." This cool little tool is from DoSomething.org and lets you pick from a list of lots of pressing issues we have, and see lists of things you can do about your issue, all organized by the size of the group of people you are working with and where you want to work on your issue.

Here's what I want you to do:

1. Pick one of these issues that we learned about in class:

• Acid Rain
• Ozone
• Global Temperature
• Chemical Pollution
• Loss of Resources
• Population Growth

2. Use the widget from dosomething.org to find something reasonable that you can do, today, to do something about your issue. There are a lot to choose from.

3. Start a new page in your science journal ("Ch. 18 The Issues") and describe your issue - what has caused it, what is the overall goal we need to reach to resolve this issue and then tell me something that you can realistically do (for example, if acid rain is my issue, then my overall goal might be to cut down on putting chemicals in the air, and what I can do is something more specific that will help achieve that goal. And no, you can't use what I just said for your entry! :) ). Don't forget to draw a picture!