Student Writing in the Discovery Lab

Posted by Laurie Sullivan at 10/3/2011

3, 2, 1 Journal Responses from Trees and the Animals that Live In and Around Them Exhibit List 3 things you learned

  • Baby trees can be smaller than a pencil
  • Black bears live in Virginia forests
  • Hawks live in Virginia forests
  • Red bats can eat up to 3,000 bugs a day
  • Bug eat acorns
  • The biggest cone is the sugar pine cone
  • Tree rings tell the age of the tree
  • The Devil Walking Stick tree is sharp
  • The amber is 6 – 10 million years old
  • Termites are very small
  • Red bats live in VA
  • Eyed click beetle
  • Petrified wood
  • Animals are everywhere
  • I learned that chocolate comes from a tree.
  • I learned that a seedling is the beginning of a plant.
  • There are different types of bark
  • When a bear is stuffed its called a taxidermy

List 2 things that surprised you

  • The biggest pine cone
  • Amber
  • Fossil leaves. Who knew!
  • Real stuffed animals
  • The tent
  • Leaves can be fossils
  • Termites are small
  • Bugs eat acorns
  • There are leaves from 30 million years ago
  • Red bats eat a lot of insects!!
  • Bobcats live in Virginia
  • Leaves can get fossilized
  • Moths and butterflies aren’t that hard to tell apart.
  • Some clothing can come from trees.
  • The fossil tree sap amber is 6 – 10 million years old
  • It surprised me when I learned that Red bats can eat up to 3,000 insects a night.
  • I never heard of of a Eyed Click Beetle
  • Seeing the bobcat teeth
  • The animals in the exhibit used to be alive.
  • The squirrel has retractable claws
  • That chocolate is made out of trees
  • Carpenter bees dig through wood
  • Bats are the only flying mammal

Write about 1 thing that was your favorite part of your visit to the Discovery Lab today

  • I liked the giant pine cone
  • The leaf fossil
  • The bear (ROAR)
  • The biggest Pine cone in the world!
  • Flying squirrel
  • The real stuffed animals
  • They had the big bear
  • Seeing the video
  • The bug in the amber
  • The tent!
  • Finding the hidden animals with the flashlights
  • The fossils
  • When we got to look at the animals
  • My favorite things were smelling things and seeing the cute squirrel
  • My favorite part of Discovery Lab today was…doing the scavenger hunt and searching for the animals in the painting.
  • The stuffed bear and fox
  • Seeing the dead animals
  • My best part was using the flashlight. It was awesome because I get to look for animals in the painting.
  • All of the leaf collection.
  • To discover all of these new facts that I learned. And to touch the 30 million year old leaf.
  • I liked how everything was real and not fake, including the animals.
  • The flying squirrel
  • I loved the leaf fossils

Write Your Own Questions

  • What is the biggest tree animal?
  • How long have trees existed?
  • What tree does the banana come from?
  • Why was there a fire at the swamp wildlife refuge?
  • What can you observe from tree rings?
  • What can you tell if the lines on tree rings are spaced out (good weather).