Microscopes

Our nine oldest students are participating in classes on using a microscope and making slides.  To start off this class and after watching a video on the parts of a microscope, students were paired and asked to find those parts on their microscope – which were all different from the video!  This was more challenging than students thought as they got to explore all of the knobs and parts of their microscope.  The following classes and centers found us exploring premade plant and animal slides, objects and then making our own slides!  Students were very interested in looking at the homemade onion and spinach leaf cell slides.  We even got a chance to dye our onion cell so that it was easier to see under the microscope.  To finish off this unit, we’ll be looking at some human cells (cheek and skin) so that we can compare them to the plant cells we observed.