In December 2016, Students in grades 6 & 7 began a unit on exploring microscopes and discovering things too small to see with our eyes. We started this unit by reading about Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and then creating our own “microscopes” with glass bottles and water. As our unit continued, we explored different hand lenses and then moved on to microscopes. With hand lenses we looked close up at mealworms and learned about drawing an oval/line/box scientific drawing of our mealworm that showed how many sections, legs, eyes, ect that it had.
Under our microscopes we measured field of view and tried out the different powers they had to offer. We enlarged a small letter e and were amazed to see the ink splats from the printer! We also talked about the importance of having clean slides and cover slips. Our final two classes involved looking at cells of onions and our own cheeks. Students got a chance to look at undyed and then dyed cells. Everyone had a chance to see the “rectangleness” of the onion cells and the more rounded shape of the cheek cells.