Week 2 Blog Post

Olivia Langosch

This week I learned all of the 8 core characteristics of of living things. (Shown in the picture above, my group and I made a chart of each core characteristic and wrote a definition and picture for each.)

• Cellular Composition: all living things are made of cells, which are the smallest building blocks of living things. 
• Genetics and Heredity: DNA and RNA.
• Maintain Homeostasis: maintain internal environment. 
• Growth and Change: Cell growth and development; mitosis. 
• Movement: ability to move. 
• Responds to Stimuli: living things respond to change in light, heat, sound, and chemical and mechanical contact. 
• Metabolism: life sustaining chemical process that gives energy. 
• Reproduction: has ability to produce copies of itself. 

I also learned about germination, which is the process by which a plant grows from a seed to a seedling. We germinating lentil seeds with our group. we put about 15-20 seeds in a cup with wet cotton balls, and put them in a light box to see how much they grow by next class. (The picture below is out group's cup of seeds.) 

The pictures above are seeds that my partner and I dissected. It was really interesting to see the embryos up close in person. I want to do this when I am a teacher because it would get my students to see this in person up close so they can get a better understanding of this idea, rather than just seeing pictures of it. I feel like it's important to get the students more involved in these experiments or even just observing because they have fun while they are learning, which make them remember it more. 

I could relate to the material I learned this week to what I already knew because in elementary school, we planted seeds in our classrooms. We planted seeds in soil, and watered them daily, with having light on them. We looked at the process over some time to see how they would grow. I also remember when i was younger, the people who worked in the office at my school had the students come in sometimes, and they hatched chicks. We got to see how they incubated them in order for them to hatch. This goes back to wondering about dormant or active. In this case, the eggs are in a dormant state until they get the warmth they need in order to hatch.