Fourth grad classes began lab by reviewing the parts and the care of microscopes. To quiz yourself on the parts click here.

This is the third year my fourth grade biologists have used microscopes in lab. In second grade, they observed plant parts and invertebrate body parts and they looked at vertebrate body parts in third grade. So, they had the necessary background knowledge to make their own slides and stain them to improve contrast.

First, we made a wet mount slide with a leaf specimen. Click here for more information. Then we peeled off the thin layer of onion skin, prepared our slide, and observed the cells under the three objective lenses. Click here for a video explaining the process. Vocabulary included forceps and pipette.

Wet Mount of Leaf Specimen:

Peeling off the thin epidermal layer of onion skin:

Staining the specimen:

Observing the cells:

Taken with an iPhone over the ocular lens: