Hermon Elementary School

Hermon, Maine

Bucket Buddy Results

Fall 2006

snail                 caddisfly               damselfly
                                                        Snail                                  Caddisfly larvae                     Damselfly nymph


A four gallon pond water sample was collected from the Hermon Meadows Golf Course, right next to our playground, on Sunday, October 1, 2006.  It was studied by our three third grade classes between Tuesday, October 3rd and Thursday, October 5th.  On Tuesday we looked at small amounts of the water in plates, using hand lenses.  We also viewed the water remaining in our aquarium, where some of the macroinvertebrates would cling to the glass walls.  On Thursday we took photos like the ones you see above with a special camera.  The following week we compared our macroinvertebrates to those found at the More About Macroinvertebrates page.  We decided that the pond water was pretty clean and healthy because we found 3 creatures from Group 2.

 We thought this project was fun.  It was cool to see animals that live in the pond.  We thought it was cool because we felt like scientists.

 Our hypothesis is that all of our different schools will not all find the same macroinvertebrates.  Some of the reasons for our hypothesis are: we have different weather and climates; different ponds may have different levels of pollution, or no pollution at all; different creatures live in different parts of the world; the pond creatures could be affected by larger animals or humans in their pond water.

This is what we found:

picture graph of macroinvertebrates found

Diagram produced by Third Graders with Kidspiration 2™, from Inspiration™, Inc.