Returning our Salmon Fry

Since school got back in after the winter break we have taken very good care of our salmon eggs.  We watched them turn from eggs to alevin, then from alevin to fry.  If you didn't know salmon grow based on the accumulated temperature of the water they are in and at certain temperatures they change.  While our water was cold, it was actually warmer than other people's water and so our salmon grew much more quickly than we expected.  Because of this, we had grown fry before spring break.  This led to a little problem because we had no one at school to feed them over the school holiday.  So, yesterday we returned our fry to the hatchery that we received them from.

Ms. Lirenman took some photos of the process.

First all the fry were happily swimming around our tank.

Then Ms. Lirenman syphoned one bucket of water out of the tank.

Next,  she scooped out all the fry and put them in the big blue bucket.

Next Ms. Lirenman took them to her car and drove them to Tynehead  Hatchery.

Ms. Lirenman drove to Tynhead Hatchery

Tynhead Hatchery is run by volunteers.

The people at the hatchery created a safe spot for our fry in their big tanks and slowly added them into their new home. If you look closely you might even see them in the water.

As you can imagine we miss our salmon children already. Don't worry though in April the entire class is going to travel back to the hatchery. Maybe we'll see our fry then, but if we don't we will meet other fry. In April it will also be a lot warmer for the fry and we will release some back into the wild. 

Throughout this salmon study, we have learned so much about salmon.  We were pretty good adoptive parents too.  In the end, while we started with 55 eggs we lost 5 eggs early on (two eggs even arrived dead), one alevin, and when we were transferring the fry to the blue bucket we found one dead fry too.  In the end, if you do the math, we brought 48 healthy fry back to the hatchery.

If you're curious to learn more about salmon please get a hold of our teacher.  We will share our salmon knowledge with you.

Planting Potatoes

Between recess and lunch today we moved all of our tables and we planted our potatoes.  Here are a few photos from our potato planting adventures.

First, we filled our pots with one bag of soil each.  We were surprised to find out that there were nutrients from fish in our soil but then we remembered that fish help trees and trees help fish. What a great way for us to connect our salmon to our potatoes.

Then Ms. Lirenman added special potato food and we did our best to mix it all in.

We won't lie, it was pretty smelly. 

Next,  we looked at our seed potatoes again and we pulled off the largest bud.

It was now time to plant the seed potatoes into the buckets.  We learned that the potatoes had to be planted 10 cm from the edge and in a hole that was pretty deep too.  We used our rulers to make sure we placed them well.

We planted five seed potatoes in each planter bucket.

Four in, one more to plant.

Finally, we gave the seed potatoes some water and put them in the hallway to start to grow over spring break.

Now we wait and hope that we start to see something after spring break.  Have you ever planted potatoes before?

Jump Rope for Heart

Today we took part in Jump Rope for Heart.  Here are some photos of us jumping around. Does your school do Jump Rope for Heart too?

We Have Fry!

We are feeling pretty proud because our salmon eggs, have changed from eggs to alevin, and now they are fry! It has been such a great learning opportunity to see it happen right in front of us too. 

Planting Potatoes

Just last week our seed potatoes arrived at school.  Yesterday afternoon we took a look at them and wrote some wonders and observations on a padlet.

Here is our padlet.