Dissecting Owl Pellets Part 2
Activities, Homeschooling — By admin on August 21, 2009 at 7:25 amThis is part 2 of a 2 part series. For part 1 click here.
At this point we have done a lot of research and reading on owls. I even found some coloring pages of owls for the kids to color while I read to them. We went into the woods and listened for owl sounds. The kids even did a book report on owls. The suspense was killing them. They couldn’t wait to get their hands on those pellets!
We started our dissection and had removed all of our little bones of not-so-lucky prey from our little pellets. It actually took a great deal of time picking through all the fur to find these tiny little bones and pick them clean. I decided this would be better done over the course of two days.
We started day two by getting out our bone sorting chart (similar to this one) and sorting all of our bones. We also found what looked to be insect bug casings, a feather and some other non-identifiable-by-us items. The kids were then able to identify what kinds of skeleton remains were in their pellet. You can also measure the skulls to help you identify the remains by using this key.
They also counted all of the bones they found and kept a record.
Since most of our pellets contained three or more skeletons, I had the children pick the one they liked the best to mount. On a piece of white card stock I had them glue the skeletons in their reconstructed forms. Alternatively you could have them glue the sorted bones into sections.
Use the old fashioned Elmer’s glue. and lots of it. Glue sticks don’t cut it.
To relieve the stress of not finding all of the bones they needed to complete the skeleton, I had them draw in the missing bones.
The last step was to label the bones. I found this great chart over at www.kidwings.com
This is the one done by my 7 year old 2nd grader. No, she is not dyslexic. And yes she is 7 and still sometimes spells her own name wrong.( I am thinking its her left to right progression that needs work? she is left handed, does that make a difference?)
This is the one by my soon-to-be 10 year old 4th grader.
And last but not least. This example was done by my 11 year old 6th grader.
I think they did an excellent job. After we had finished, Juliana said ” I want to do a human body next!”. ME: “uh, well…maybe…in college…”…. Which led into questions about what people who dissect human bodies for a career are called. (scientists, pathologists, coroners?) Which led to her change from wanting to be a princess-surgeon-dance instructor to a coroner. Uh huh, we love homeschooling.
I hope you will try the owl pellet dissection lab with your kids. If you do, please come back and share your thoughts and or suggestions.
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37 Comments
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