We had the opportunity to go tree planting in the trail behind our school, all together, we planted a couple hundred trees! Shout out to James who planted more than anyone else, seventeen trees planted in the 2 hours we were there!

We also got to do a fun experiment to visualize our own cells and nuclei under a microscope using methylene blue.

We extracted our cheek cells using popsicle sticks, scraping anything and everything off the walls of our mouth.

Once we were satisfied with the goop on the end of our popsicle sticks we deposited it onto the center of our slides and applied a single drop of our methylene blue solution. Once it was ready, we took our cover slip and sandwiched the excess solution away, dabbing it with a tissue. We took our slides and put them on the microscope, and voila! We were able to see our stained nuclei inside our cheek cells. Overall it was a very busy week, but our students were up to the task.

Last week we had the opportunity to return to Pinecrest for our annual trip, which was very rewarding, regardless of the rain. 

One of the most rewarding experiences was our nature walk, where students saw tons of little critters, including this Eastern Red Backed Salamander!

We wanted to go for a nighttime walk to see the night sky in the dark sky preserve, but unfortunately the clouds had other plans. At least we got this awesome picture!

Grade 8 Class (2023 – 2024)