Hermon Elementary School

Hermon, Maine

Bucket Buddy Results

September 2009

Our pond water sample was collected on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 from our neighbor, Hermon Meadows Golf Course. It was studied by our third grade students on Thursday and Friday of that week. We looked at small amounts of water in bowls, using hand lenses. We also viewed the water remaining in our aquarium, where some of the macroinvertebrates would cling to the glass walls. We compared our findings to a website about macroinvertebrates and water quality and determined that our water quality was good because we found a pollution sensitive creature, the right-handed snail - actually, we found 23 of them!  We're glad the water quality was good and we hope nobody pollutes the pond.

We had a really good time doing this project.  It was fun and interesting, even for those of us who weren't big bug fans.  We acted like scientists and it was awesome to learn alot about water bugs, their environment and water quality.  Many of us have never seen (or heard of) these unfamiliar creatures before since they live underwater.  They have some characteristics that we couldn't see, but we learned that the right-handed snails breathe with gills, like a fish.  We found interesting facts about water bugs from the websites we used, like the names of some of the beetles we found. We know we'll learn more by looking at information from the other schools, too.  We learned alot about the pond next door to our playground!

Our hypothesis is that our schools will not all see the same kinds of creatures in our pond water. Some of the reasons for our thinking are: different places have different climates, and some of our schools are on different continents; there are millions of  different species of bugs in different parts of the world; some bugs are similiar but not exactly the same; there are predators of some creatures in some areas; and different places around the world have different water qualities and some creatures like clear water and some will tolerate dirty water.

This is what we found: