Wednesday, September 14, 2011

General Announcements:

• If you ever notice something missing or wrong on the blog, comment to let me know about it - I don't always have the whole picture. -Grace
• Wed., 9/21: Field trip to visit Anne Griffin's beehive in Florence and scout examples of Roman architecture along the way. We are leaving around 10:30 am and should be back by 2:30 pm. We will make arrangements for Blue House lunches, but otherwise make sure that you have food that doesn't require heating up.

Humanities:

• Due Fri., 9/16:
  • All: Sign Community Compact and return to school.
  • Lord of the Flies: Read Ch. 5 & 6 and complete reading log.
  • Girl Who Owned a City: Read Ch. 10 and complete reading log.
  • Come prepared to discuss.

Math:

• Due Thu., 9/15: Gr. 8:
  • Graph height/armspan data, acc. to Inc. 4.1.
  • Answer prob. #4.1 and 4.1 Follow-up.
  • Find mean, mode and range for the class height.
  • Download table of class height/arm span data (.pdf, 48kb)
  
  Gr. 7:
  • On p. 15 of Data About Us, complete #1 and 2. For #1, you do not need to make a table.

Science:

• Due Thurs., 9/15: Plant-based inventory at home (15 items).

Español:

Gr. 8
• Due Tue., 9/13:

Moment of Zen:

The Flowered Nest of the Loner Bee

Bees are commonly though of as the epitome of social animals—our idea of the "hive mind," indicating individuals working as separate bodies following a shared consciousness, borrows from bee terminology. Social hive bees account for the larger population of bees in the world and in popular understanding. But did you know that 75% of the over 20,000 identified bee species are solitary? This means that individual female bees build and provision nests for their eggs and larvae on their own, with no intervention from a collective hive. Seen above are a few of the nests of one of these species, Osmia avosetta, found in the Middle East. This species' nests, described in a recently released article, are largely constructed underground, of colorful flower petals and a thin mortar of mud. Each of the delicately constructed chambers seen above is built to house and feed a single bee larva.

• Osmia avosetta flower-nest gallery at National Geographic