Our puny fast plants have died a natural death and we collected the seed pods. The children had used dried bees to pollinate the plants. Some took, others did not get fertilized. (I really cannot understand why Shirai's plants are so lush and tall. Ours were very spindly.)

We will try to grow the new seeds soon...the children crossed normals with normals, normals with mutants, and then mutants with mutants. We have written hypotheses on what will result.

The water quality study is taking a turn for the worse. Our Digi-scopes seem to have technical problems. We had a time finding a computer or two to run OS9 but we did. Today we worked all morninng in the lab and found two out of the 5 Digi-Scopes malfunctioned.

Anyway, we did find paramecium, and amoeba or two, and lots of eugulena. We even saw the little tail. Our Digi-scopes allowed the microscope to show the image on the computer screen. We froze the images, printed them, and measured in mm and cm and inches while on screen. It was great.

The children then went on to experiment with prepared slides from a kit, on chicken feathers, mold spores, and fabric pieces.

We will get water samples from a local swamp in early January and compare the "critters" that are or are not there.

Tomorrow evening we video conference and will share the Digi-scope results and tell the Japanese children about Christmas in America.
We wil not conference again until late in January, as year-round schools are out until mid-January. (Yesssssssss! )

Wow, sounds like you are keeping busy. Now that you mention it, our fast plants seem kind of puny compared to the ones I saw growing this summer in Japan. I suppose it could have something to do with the humidity, or soil nutrients, or something along those lines.

Keep up 'da good work,

Jim,
Cheyenne East HS