Biology Research Project

While Senia carries the weight of most of the homeschool responsibilities, she asked me to teach science. The kids and I have class on Fridays, and have just wrapped up an interesting unit on biodiversity, particularly here in NEPA (that's local jargon: "Northeastern Pennsylvania").

Don't worry, Ioann was smiling moments before this photo.

We wanted to get some real data about the animal populations here in our area. We set out to tally every land mammal we saw. Over the period of a month or so, we certainly marked down our fair share of deer; all three of the kids tallied over one hundred deer sightings. Most notably--I am thankful they showed up during our research period--we had one bobcat sighting and eight black bears! We never expected that many bears, but on our way to the school and church, there is an area with very frequent sightings, probably partly due to this being the preparation time for hibernation.

the final charts

The kids prepared some graphs to display and communicate their results. We ended up with a hypothetical next step to answer some of the questions that came up. We wanted more accurate information on the proportions of animals, because there were odd numbers, like 120 deer, but only 4-5 rabbits. Surely that is not the proper proportions. And if it is, what could be done to protect the lower populations or limit the higher populations.


It was great fun and built some basic research and communication skills. Now, on to molecules, DNA, and other such business.