Point Defiance Zoo

It's good to have friends. When the Ladybugs and Bumblebees had too many tickets for the zoo they thought of their friends, the Narwhals. No one passes up a chance to visit the zoo and since it was on a week day and raining we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Tacoma Art Museum

We love going to downtown Tacoma! This trip we visited TAM and their new wing, the Haub Family Collection of American Western Art. We learned about famous western artists before our visit and found works by Remington, Proctor, Bierstadt and other artists that were new to us. We also had time in the artist's studio, a walk across the Bridge of Glass, a little play time at the park and lunch with our middle school friends. Another great field study.

Lewis and Clark

One of the Peacock grandparents does interpretive presentations as Toussaint Charbonne of the Lewis and Clark expedition. We were lucky enough to have him come by and share Indian sign language, trade goods and pelts with us as he talked about the expedition. We look forward to him returning next year when we are studying Lewis and Clark and telling us so much more.

More Zombies!

The Narwhals and Peacocks had a visit from one of our parents, Dr. Sprenger, who told us about her job as a cellular biologist and her work with UW looking for cancer treatments. We then conducted the ELISA assay which is what doctors use to determine whether a person is infected by a virus, in this case the Zombie Virus!
All the students tested a sample of their saliva against controls in a process that involved many steps and careful measuring of the testing chemicals. In the end we found out who was infected but, luckily, Dr. Sprenger brought along an oral vaccine and all were cured!

Zombies!!

After a zombie outbreak that affected 2 billion people the world was in disorder. Fortunately, the Narwhals recently graduated from the Head School of Neuroscience and were put on the problem with what they knew about neurotransmitters and chemicals in the brain. They put together drugs to treat the major traits of zombies (hunger, rage, lack of coordination) using dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, epinephrine and GABA. Each solution was unique, including Operation Candy Corn, but all offered hope for humanity in returning the zombies back to normal humans!

Learning About Government

The Narwhals are studying systems of government and we had a visit from one of our Peacock parents who works for the state legislature. Mr. Mattson told us about his job and how a bill becomes the law. The kids then acted out a skit to see the process in action.

Our next stop was a field trip to Olympia to visit the state capital. We saw all three branches of government in action first with a mock trail in the Supreme Court chambers.

 Attorneys for the state

 The Supremes

 Attorneys for the defendant

Deliberation

We visited the governor's office, spoke with our local representative, saw the House chambers and got invited to the Senate floor, something our tour guide had never even done. It was a busy day but the Narwhals really got an inside look at Washington state government and our beautiful Capital.