Owl Pellets!!!

After learning about many types of habitats and life cycles of animals, our class focused on food chains last week. They learned about how energy transfers and how animals need each other and plants to survive. They even briefly learned fancy terms like herbivore and carnivore (these terms aren't perfected yet though!). On Thursday, the kids made their own food chains where they started with either the sun or a plant and finished with a larger animal. On Friday, they learned how life cycles really work with a hands-on experiment. We actually dissected owl pellets!! For those of you that do not know about owl pellets...here is brief description:
1. The owl eats an animal whole (mouse, snake, etc.).
2. After 3-6 hours, all of the "meat" from the animal has been digested.
3. The owl "coughs up" a small pellet of fur and bones.

Groups of three or four were given an owl pellet and some popsicle sticks to use for the dissection process. They separated the bones from the fur, and made predictions about what type of animal they think the bones came from. It was an awesome experiment because they actually got to see many different types of animal bones! Check out our pictures!

Look how engaged they are with dissecting! So much fun!

This group separated all of the bones and fur.

Here is an up close and personal shot of the dissection process!



THANK YOU to Mr. Lynn and Mrs. Mendez for volunteering to help me for the dissection.  The kids did a wonderful job, but I definitely couldn't have done it without volunteers!