How to Find Water Bears

Does moss or lichen grow in your schoolyard or park? If so, you probably have water bears! These endearing and hardy micro-animals are fun to hunt for and easy to observe with a dissecting microscope at 40x magnification. Also known as tardigrades, water bears resemble gummy bears with eight legs. Don’t let their cuteness fool […]

From STEM to STEAM: Tunnel Books

A big joy of visiting schools is seeing how teachers integrate the Arts to ignite learning in fabulous STEAM-inspired projects. Beckery Renaud used this approach with her fifth- and sixth-graders at Pembroke Elementary School, who made these beautiful tunnel books inspired by Extreme Survivors: Animals That Time Forgot. This project brings together Science, Technology, Engineering, […]

Meet the Water Bear: Toughest Animal on Earth!

This “bear” is smaller than a grain of sand, but it’s super tough! Meet the water bear, or tardigrade, a tiny animal found on every continent–and maybe in your backyard! Tardigrades live in films of water on lichen and moss, as well as in ponds and in the ocean. If their moss clumps dry up, […]