'Hootie' and 'blowfish' enter kids' study of adapting animals

Millbrook Elementary School third-graders participated in a science activity Friday with the whimsical name of "Hootie and the Blowfish."

Nope, not the band, but "Hootie" for an owl study and the "blowfish" for a project involving its cousin, the puffer fish.

Teacher Laura Christenbury invited all five third-grade classes and enlisted the help of parent-volunteers to work at stations, each with a different project. The theme was animal adaptation.

"Science is not just finding facts in books but doing experiments," Christenbury said. "This is all hands-on activities with many of them lessons in inquiry. All the kids had to come up with their own ideas and draw conclusions. They're all about different animals and adaptations, how they find their own special niche in their habitats and how they survive."

The students got a chance to explore the food webs and chains of puffer fish replicas because the real ones are extremely poisonous.

"The puffer fish are really cool animals," third-grader Alexus Bell said. A few minutes later, she and classmate Kamie McCollum were sorting through material to find bones from different animals and owls.

"The kids are learning how owls regurgitate their food because they can't swallow bones and the fur," Christenbury said.

At another station, the students studied various bird beaks and how each is suited to find the appropriate food source. The kids also were provided with tools like chopsticks, pliers, tweezers and straws to determine which picks up a given food source the best.

Still another station provided an assortment of animal teeth so the students could see how different teeth are suited to the food they eat. Herbivores or plant-eaters have flat teeth, while meat-eating carnivores, not surprisingly, have sharp teeth. Omnivores that eat plants and animals have both kinds of teeth.

"We have cards for the kids where they have to match the animals with the different teeth and decide the food source they would eat," Christenbury said.

Volunteer Susan Glenn, Corey's mother, is a chemistry professor at USC Aiken.

"These kids are better behaved than my own students," she said with a smile. "I like that they're seeing professors as normal people, and it's really fun to work and talk with the kids. They're excellent students and really know what they're doing."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.