Creativity and Retail Therapy

The end is near and the stress is great, but for our last lab we got to have a little fun! We were tasked with using our favorite unit plan and designing a lesson using items that we purchased at the Dollar Tree! My favorite unit so far is my Wildlife Management unit. Without too much struggle, I had a couple of ideas going in to the store. Once I got there they didn't have exactly what I was looking for. To spice up my Wildlife Marking Lesson, I picked up a set of Christmas dove replicas, and some colored zip ties. My plan is to have students "color band" the birds with zip ties and have them look at them from afar to see if they can tell their birds apart with their unique color bands. To do this the whole class will have to create a spreadsheet of each individual bird. The other items I bought were plastic toy sets of snakes, frogs, and lizards, a long with a role of brightly colored wrapping paper. These are to bring my Survey Techniques Lesson to life! I laid out the wrapping paper and scattered the wildlife around it. I will have one group of students set it up, take a picture of it, and give the picture to another group. The students will have to analyze the photos to estimate population size. If the description doesn't cut it, check it out down below! Can you guess how many critters are in the picture?!