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Owl Pellets
A brave young student learned about barred owl skulls (he even let this replica sit on his shoulder) 
and then he dissected a fake owl pellet and identified the plastic bones to be from a rodent skeleton. Way to go!
Let it Snow!
We made a small snowstorm in Fun with Science using Instasnow. It’s not cold enough in NC to snow yet, but we decided to make some snow in the hospital anyway to welcome winter weather to come (and because snow is fun to play with!).
Spooky Halloween Science
Dry ice experiments!
Photos posted with permission.
Good Advice
Thanks again, Blue Butterfly.
My Life as a Blue Butterfly
My life as a blue butterfly.
Before I became a butterfly, I was a caterpillar. I was a cute blue
caterpillar with cute stripes. When I was a beautiful caterpillar, I
ate leaves and I wiggled every day. I hid from birds in the ground or
sometimes in a tree. One bird almost got me. It was a cardinal and I
got him by punching him in the nose. My chrysalis was cute and shiny
and purple. I became a beautiful butterfly. Now I fly around and
around with my other family and friends and we play and have a good
time. We eat bacon pizza. Then we get thirsty and we fly down to
drink some sprite. We live at CiCi’s Pizza. We don’t live a long
time. We come out sometimes in the day and sometimes at night. We
like doing the macarena and the cha-cha slide. And we take a bath and
slide down. We have our own beds on the clouds. We watch ‘that’s so
raven’ on TV and we play with mini baby dolls like bratz. We can sing
and we sing country, rap, and church songs. We go to insect school.
They teach us how to tell time. We learn how to read. They teach us
how to do math. We go to the bathroom, and we wash our hands after we
go. We take little snacks of fruit. We love the stars up in the sky.
-Beautiful Blue
Cheers to you, Blue Butterfly!
Thanks to both of my butterfly writers for inspiring me this week!
An insightful kid wrote this poem- I love the idea that she was thinking about hugging clouds even though she was in the hospital
Butterfly
Orange black yellow
It’s pretty
Antennae like little tweezers
Body like a toothpick
Just like being alone in a field full of grass
And it’s sunny and
A rainbow comes
Legs like strings
Flying is when your feet are lifting off of the ground
Like I hugged a cloud
Candy Experiments!
During science night in the playroom at Duke Children’s hospital, we did a bunch of experiments with candy. The next time you eat sour candy, imagine what it might look like if you put it into a container of baking soda + water….
Did you know that the color coating of m&ms comes off? 
We got many of our ideas from: http://www.candyexperiments.com/
Ocean Ecosystem
Two magnificent science students worked on creating this model of an ocean ecosystem. 
