Monday, February 14, 2011

This Week in Science

On the first day of this unit, we set up our blogs and created our first post. Our first post was called First Impressions. We wrote about our feelings on frogs and blogs. I did not know anything about frogs. I did not know what the dissection would be like. On our second day, we finished customizing our blogs and we updated our profiles. Then, in our notebooks, we wrote some interesting facts about frogs. We researched why frogs are good bioindicators. In Block 2, we finally got to start the dissection! I was very nervous! I did not want to touch the frog at first, so I decided to be the Frogtographer for my group. I had to take pictures of the dissection as we worked. On Friday, we got to remove the organs and identify them on a worksheet. I was not scared anymore, and decided to try removing the liver.


I learned that frogs have lungs but they can also breathe through their skin. I learned this when I looked up frog facts. I also saw that frogs have the ability to hear, with their tympani. I learned that frogs have similar organs to us inside. They have a heart, lungs, liver, intestines, stomach, pancreas, and spleen. There are other organs but we did not find them. I also learned that they have structures that humans do not have, like fat bodies. I think fat bodies are used to store food. I learned how to tell if a frog is a boy or a girl by looking at their thumbs. But, at first I thought my frog was a boy and my group named him Daniel, but then we found eggs inside, and realized we were wrong. She was actually a Danielle!


This picture shows our frog's mouth, nictitating membranes, and eyes. I chose this picture because it was the first part of the frog that we looked at.
This picture shows the inside of our frog. I chose this picture because you can see a few of the organs and you can see the fat bodies inside.


This picture shows the worksheet where we placed our organs. I chose this picture because it shows all of our hard work.


This picture shows how excited we were about the dissection! I chose this picture because I wanted to show how much fun we were having!!