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Monday Morning Mash-up

April is a big month for science-related events and activities, so it’s time to pull out those planners.srvr

April 24, 2010 is International Astronomy Day (Astronomy Week: April 19-25) . For more information, check The Astronomical League website. You also might want to look for local events at your regional astronomy organizations, such as the Canadian Astronomical Society. Many clubs will have their telescopes out for public viewing sometime that weekend.

National Environmental Education Week is April 11-17, 2010. Spend some time at this website. Activities range from a photo blog contest to Nature and Water Bee Quizzes.

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Then from April 17 through 25, 2010 are the Earth Day celebrations, with Earth Day being April 22. This year is the 40th anniversary. The website seems to be a bit unorganized, for example the Earth Day events listed under the programs tab are for 2009 events.  2010 events can be found in the left sidebar.

Arbor Day is April 30, 2010 or the last Friday in April. Some states celebrate on a different date if that is a better season to plant trees for that area. For example, we celebrate Arbor Day in March in Arizona. Check the clickable map of the US for dates of Arbor Day celebrations in your state. The map also gives your state tree. The site also has an interactive book about the history of Arbor Day.

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Finally, if you children are interested in wildlife and nature, take a look at these cool Wild Times magazines available free in .pdf format. They are beautifully done.

More Citizen Science

If you live in the San Francisco area and are interested in ants, take a look at this post on my Wild About Ants blog about a citizen science project that’s being run by the California Academy of Sciences. It’s definitely kid friendly.

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Yes, we were in San Francisco last week. We got to see a lot of interesting new things.

Let us know if you decide to participate in the ant study. We’d love to hear what you find out.

Bug of the Week: Water Fleas

One of the reasons I named this feature “Bug of the Week” was so I could occasionally include non-insects. This is one of those weeks.

My son and I have added what we call our “practice pond” to our back yard. It is not much more than a container with water and plants, but we are already finding critters. We think they came with the plants.

Yesterday we decided to check what the little moving flecks were under our old microscope. Wow, they were so cool. They had oar-like appendages to move with and you could see stuff moving around inside. We figured out they were water fleas, a type of tiny crustacean.

Although I don’t have a way of capturing what we saw via video (yet), here’s a YouTube video that gives you an idea.

Aren’t they cool?

Have you ever checked pond water for tiny animals?

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