Prey/Predator experiment

For Zoology, we did an experiment showing what happens as predators hunt and eat prey. We had large yellow pieces of paper representing Cougars and smaller squares of orange paper representing deer. We spread the deer out in a 2ft X 2ft square and dropped the cougars into the area. If a cougar landed on any, he got something to eat that year and lived. If he landed on more than 3 deer that year, then we was able to reproduce. Any deer that were not eaten reproduced for the next year. We went through 20 years to see what happens. In the beginning, the cougars were able to eat most of the deer, especially as there were more cougars in the area. As some of the cougars died off because of lack of deer, more deer were able to survive and reproduce. The more deer there were in the area, the more cougars there were. As the cougar population increased, the deer population began to decrease, until in the end, we were pretty much back to where we started - just a few deer and only 1 or 2 cougars. Interesting, and we had fun with it!

Habitat activity

We are using Apologia's Zoology 3 book this year for science. I really enjoying using the Apologia books as a read aloud and doing the notebooking and other activities together. I am learning so much along with the boys. For this activity, we were learning how habitat and camoflauge effect the life cycles of an animal. We tore different colors of construction paper into pieces and mixed them into a laundry basket. Then we mixed M&Ms in with the torn paper. The boys had 1 minute to find as many M&Ms as they could. Then we counted them and subtracted from what we started out with to see which color had the most "survive" in that habitat.

Of course, when we were done, none of the M&Ms "survived". :) They were all eaten!