Copy of a letter your student took home today from us .... unusual spring break homework!

Greetings Parents!

                

Over spring break, your student will have some unusual science homework and we thought that you should be in on the loop too. On April 21^st, your student will be going on a virtual field trip to look at bugs through a scanning electron microscope located at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. We will be controlling the microscope through our computers at Horizon and viewing insects at a microscopic level.

               

In order for this to happen though, we need bugs! Your students’ homework will be to collect bugs over spring break and bring them into school on Monday, April 12^th. We are looking for bugs that are small (ideally about a cm. long) and are not squished to death. Bugs that are captured can be put into jars until they die and then gently wrapped (tissue paper/ ziplock bag) to be brought in to Mr. Finn. We will send the bugs that we have down to the University where they will prep the bugs for our scheduled time on the microscope.

                

When we look at the bugs we will be joined by a team of grad students at the University to help us understand what we are looking at. We are going to learn a great deal about the types of bugs that are in Pewaukee (or wherever you bring them from) and how they play a part in our ecosystem.  Not to mention the really cool pictures and stories to go along with it! If you would like some more information about BugScope, head on over to http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/ .

Thanks and enjoy the bug collecting!

Mr. Finn and Mrs. Roben