In science we are learning about genetics. Genetics are your traits. like what you look like. We are learning that you can be either homozygous or heterozygous . If you are homozygous is when you have two of one trait. If you are heterozygous tall, you have one tall chromosome and one short one. Lets say that Bob is       Heterozygous tall and Patty is herezygous tall. Will thier child be tall or short.
 This is were the Punnent squares come in. This is a type of square that is broken up into four parts. They mom's traits go on top and the dad's traits go on the sides. This will show the child's chances of being tall or short. You fill in the square The capital letter shows the tall genes and the lower case letter show the short gene. If you have two capital letters or just one you will be tall if you have two lower case letters you will be short. This child has a 75% chance of being tall and a 25% chance of being short. 

     A while back (before winter break) we made some cute little ornaments out of beads that look like DNA. It was a time consuming project. The first thing that we had to do was get the beads. Mrs. Poole set up stations and we went around counting and collecting our beads that we needed. WE also needed to get some wire to put the beads on
     Once we got all of our beads and wire  we sat down and Mrs. Poole taught us how to do it. She turned on the overhead and She showed us step by step instructions. We had a certian amount of each color beads. We had small yellow and white beads and long red,blue and green beads We used a spiecal techinque to twist the wire and ut beads on until it looked like DNA. Once we got all of the beads of the wire we finished it by tieing it and then adding a loop, so we could hang it on a Christmas tree put it on you backpack , whatever you want. Mrs. Poole even made it into earings. I put mine on my Christmas tree. This project help me to learn what DNA looks like. I really enjoyed it. 

     Now that we are done with the first semester, we will be starting some new things. Looking back at the first semester some thing have been challenging.I think the hardest thing from the first semester was learning about the parts of the cell. I think that this was hard for me because we had to memorize all of the parts of the cell, what it looks like and what it dose. What helped for me was looking over the study guides and studying for a long period of time. 
       In science we have also completed a lot of fun activities. One of my favorites that we did in class was building a model of DNA. We use something like Legos. We worked with a partner and we first made a model and then we took it a part to help us learn the process of the way DNA replicates. Since our class what not paying much attention we couldn't do the DNA  extraction lab. So  I did it at home for extra credit.We smushed up strawberries and we mixed it with  water and soap in a clear jar and then we poured rubbing alcohol on top strawberries and put it in the fridge. We then could see the DNA parts in that had separated from the rest of the strawberries on top in the rubbing alcohol.I had a lot of fun and it brought my grade up! I hope that this next semester will be successful.