Ever since my daughter has read the book series “Guardians of Gahoole” she has been fascinated with owls. She was delighted to learn that during my unit on zoology for homeschool coop the older kids will be dissecting an owl pellet. However, the place where I ordered them would not send real ones for the kids to dissect. Instead we ended up dissecting some that looked like the real owl pellets. It was a disappointment but the kids were able to experience the dissection and learned quite a bit about owls.
So when I got the opportunity to review some products from The Young Scientists Club I was delighted to be assigned the Owl Kit which is part of the Set #10 – WH-925-1110 from the Young Scientists Series.
Each set in the Young Scientists Series contain three complete science kits (3 manuals/3 supply bags). You can decide to complete the sets in order to experience the ultimate in science adventure. However, the sets can also be done individually. The Young Scientists Club recommended to start with sets 1, 2 or 3 for kids ages 5 to 8 years old and for children ages 9 to 12 it is recommended to start with set 4 and up.
Each set comes in a specially identified envelope which contains all you need.
For the owl set, here’s what was included in the envelope.
Four experiments are included in the kit. The first one was about dividing the animals from one of the pages by groups – herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. The second experiment will guide you to make a simple food chain. Experiment three will guide you to build up a food web using all the animals except the ones used during the second experiment. Finally, the last experiment was the one my daughter was looking forward to – the owl pellet dissection.
My daughter was excited to start. But this excitement turn quickly to a comment about the smell and how it was gross to touch it. I told her to get a mask to isolate the smell from her nose which she promptly went to get. And then I encouraged her to pursue the dissection as planned.
Tweezers are included which could help you to open the pellet and start “digging” for the bones. At some point she asked if I could help her doing it. I jumped at the opportunity because I had never done this before. It take patience and gentleness to find all the pieces and avoid breaking them.
As we continue digging in the owl pellet, we came to the conclusion that there was more than one animal in there. Owls would eat rodents, shrews, moles, and birds. The more we looked for remains, the more we realized that this particular owl had a special taste for rodents. We found a few skulls belonging the the rodents categories. My daughter also proceeded to try to build the skeleton of one rodent.
In the end this was a great experience and I am very pleased with the fact that they have sent a real owl pellet. We could feel the fur and the bones as we searched the owl pellet. If you desire you can also bleach the bones but we decide not to do this. The instruction book also contains some information on owls that the child can read.
It was a fun kit to do on a very humid day. We had a great time finding the bones and trying to identify them. It is a great way to get your kids to do something out of the ordinary and learn some fascinating things about owls and the kind of animals they eat.
The Young Scientists Club kits are available on their http://www.theyoungscientistsclub.com/retailstore/retail-youngscientist.htmlor on amazon.ca and amazon.com.
Disclaimer: I received this kit for review purposes from KidStuff PR and Young Scientists Club. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.
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