Eleanor Studies Ocean Plants by Eleanor

Hello, this is Eleanor Pallister again, in a new year. I am quite excited to be seeing you again. Right now, we are talking about the sea, and plants under there, and other great things in the water. 

Have you ever heard of algae? (Pronounced AL-gee.) Have you ever heard of baleen? Have you ever heard of krill? I can tell you all about them. But why don't you watch this video up here to give you a start?

Now that you've watched the video, you may have heard me talk about phytoplankton. Phytoplankton, means "plant drifter" Phytoplankton produce a large amount of oxygen, for creatures in the ocean AND creatures on land. But it's not like you could just walk up to some ocean water, scoop it up, take a whiff, and have unlimited amounts of air forever. The phytoplankton would eventually die.

Plankton are quite, quite tiny, and you can only see them with a very fine microscope. If you do have a very fine microscope on hand, take a dropper, drop some of the ocean water on to a the top of a microscope slide and then take a look. You will probably be able to see very small sort of creature thing eating each other. it's very interesting.

Now away from plankton. Let's talk about baleen. (Pronounced BAY-leen.) Now, first of before we get into what baleen is, whales don't have teeth, instead they have baleen, which is sort of like a strainer - you know, how when you strain macaroni? Baleen acts like a strainer for whales, they use baleen like teeth, they don't chomp down, like us, instead they strain the ocean water with their baleen and get tiny animals like krill, and things.

Now, time for krill. Krill are these little tiny animals which are very important to sea life. Without krill, a  lot of the food web would not be there, like whales and fish and many other things which I will not mention because there are too many. Krill are very tiny, I'm not quite of the size, but make an estimate in your head.

And now you know three things about tiny ocean life (except for the big whale part). Now you have a start off all about plants in the ocean. Please watch Bill Nye the Science Guy's video "Ocean Life" or visit your local aquarium to find out more. Thank you, I'll be here all week!

Touching sea cucumbers and starfish at the Aquarium

Helping animals 

Super-Awesome Science with Eleanor Pallister!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First of all, speaking of earth science, here is a little bit of art my family did where we painted rocks!

I have a learned a lot about plants this term. I am super, super, super, excited. I think you will be too when you hear I coloured celery! Colouring the celery taught me about water in plants veins. 

 This is me, my friend Miranda and Sophia collecting leaf specimens. We noticed that the leaves could be ver small and point or very big and round.

This is us THROWING leaf specimens!

This is when we were looking at seeds and how seeds travel in little tiny helicopters. (Not real helicopters. They are shaped with sort of a helicopter propellor on them, and spin.) Trees have lots of different ways to spread their seeds and some are with helicopters!

This is a tree which some really odd sap was coming out of, if you look closely you can see on a diagonal slant off my shoulder, you can see sort of a whitish purple blomp of sap. It came out of the tree but but didnt ever drip down far enough so a solid crust formed around it and when you touched it would sort of dent in.

This is a tree which has been uprooted. This was not the only tree which we saw uprooted in our neighbourhood, there were about 3-5 trees we saw like his after the wind storm. The reason why all these trees which which are very supportive was that in the past when we had wind storms, there usually weren't droughts before that. But this summer there was a drought right before the windstorm so all of the roots were dry, and not strong. So that's why when the windstorm came tree branches and trees fell over like crazy. This part where my foot is, is a massive, massive, massive tree root where it just snapped!

This is a nursing tree which I found on a hike I went on.  (Not like milk-nursing, it is called a nursing tree because it gave up it's stump/roots and is giving its nutrients to make a new tree.) So this old tree died and new trees seeds got blown on to it, and the weather made it become a new tree.

This is me with my brownie troop going tree planting! It was so mega-fun! I hung out with all of my friends. The trees were little babies and they were in little pots. There were 3 simple steps to planting the trees. Step 1: take the plant out of the pot. Step 2: take your tree and place it in the hole. Step 3: re-bury the tree, but make sure it is not up to the stem or it will rot and grow moldy and snap and die! We had mega-awesome fun and I even saw a salmon go up stream to lay its eggs. We watched it go upstream 6 times and on the last time it made it! And I got a tree planting t-shirt.

This term I have made a amazing car/rocketship/hippopotamus! In this picture I would like to show you how I used screws and hinges to make a door. In the pictures above you can see the wings of the rocket ship we attached them by gluing and taping them on. We also put on wheels but a few of them are falling off. We haven't finished painting it yet.

The steering wheel was made from a old CD and a toilet paper tube. The gear shift lever is made of a styrofoam ball, and old box and a whole lot of tape! If you can look above the steering wheel, that is the windshield window. We used blue cellophane, and taped it on. it was mega-fun and amazing to do it. 

This is the control panel. it shows so many amazing buttons and things, or if you're low on gas, or honk your horn, or a windshield wiper, though the windshield wiper we made broke. 

They are some birds which I saw outside my front window, they were flying from lawn to lawn to lawn. it was like they all had the same mind! They flew all at the same time from lawn to lawn and up on to telephone lines, to lines. it was a amazing how they did it.

Oh, excuse me! That's not supposed to be on here! Next slide!!!!