A wide world to explore

Marisa O’Neil

Take two plastic two-liter bottles, do some creative cutting, add

some dirt, seeds and water and -- voila -- you got your own little

ecosystem.

At Killybrooke Elementary, Lisa Edwards, who has been named

teacher of the year, is helping her fourth-grade students create a

world in a bottle. When they’re done, they’ll have a terrarium and

aquarium full of life, including sprouted seeds, guppies, sea snails

and crickets.

To start, students paired up and focused on their terrariums, made

from a bottle with the bottom cut off. For the first order of

business, Edwards showed them how to work together and cover the

bottle opening with a screen.

Sho De La Torre, 10, held the bottle as partner Gabriel Atkins,

10, carefully placed the screen over the spout and tried to wrap it

with a rubber band. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Gabriel sighed

with frustration and Sho showed signs of fatigue.

“My arm is hurting me,” he groaned as he held the bottle upright.

Finally, Gabriel got it set.

Next, they had to add the terra to the terrarium.

“Be very careful,” Edwards told the class, demonstrating how to

fill it with gravel and soil. “If you make a mistake, it won’t work.

The life cycle won’t be complete, and your animals will die.”

A deafening roar filled the classroom as gravel bounced around

inside the plastic bottles and settled at the bottom, piling up on

top of itself.

“This is so cool,” 10-year-old Alyssa Hatton exclaimed as she held

up her terrarium and examined the layered soil and gravel.

“I love science,” said her partner, 9-year-old Summer Rudas, as

she tapped the bottle to level the soil.

Once they had the soil in place, they marked four different

planting segments into it and marked each one for the seeds planted:

rye, alfalfa and mustard.

“We’ve got a lot of bugs in ours,” he said as he pressed mustard

seeds into the soil.

Lastly, the students filled the bottles with twigs, leaves and

other organic materials collected in a morning hunt around the

campus.

“Now you get to make your forest,” Edwards told the class.

Christina Nguyen clapped with excitement and carefully placed a

small, brown leaf, yellow flower and pinecone on top of the soil.

While she carefully arranged her habitat, 10-year-old Braulio

Gonzalez suffered a slight setback.

“They got all messed up,” he told Edwards about his seeds, which

had gotten jumbled up by a slight knock. “I won’t know where anything

is.”

“That’s OK,” Edwards assured. “That’s just part of science.”

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot

education writer Marisa O’Neil visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa

area and writes about her experience.