(Want to pin this post for later? Click here to repin!) As fun as prepared slides are, students always LOVE looking at living organisms under the microscope. I generally order mixed protist specimens from Wards or Carolina Biological, but this year I didn't get an order put in on time (if your district is like mine it often takes months to get things ordered and delivered...) Since I didn't have anything for my students to look at, I decided to make a hay infusion. It turned out great for what I needed. Overall, here are the pros and cons of doing a hay infusion: PROS:
Setup:
Before using the hay infusion, have your students practice using the microscope with prepared slides. If students are comfortable with how to focus and scan, it makes it much easier when they are looking for things that are swimming around. We began the class with learning how to set up a wet mount slide using an elodea leaf. Once they got the hang of it, they cleaned their slide and took a sample of the pond water. Here is a video I took under 40x magnification: and 100x magnification: Although there weren't a variety of species to see, students were still pretty excited to see them swimming around. I wasn't able to identify which type of protists we had- if you had honors or AP students it might be fun to give them a protist dichotomous key and see if they can figure out which species they find. Overall it was a success and didn't cost me a cent!
1 Comment
Lisa Sunshine
8/31/2018 05:26:24 pm
I tried pond water, grass clippings, a little yeast. I don't think it sat long enough, but next year I will be more prepared!
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Becca
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