Youth Programs at SDSM&T

The fungus and the moss got married because they took a lichen to each other.

Sadly, their marriage is on the rocks now.

When I overhear a student say something hilarious.

So true! 

Did you know that you can make houses out of plastic bottles? By filling them with sand, and molding them together with mud or cement, the walls created are actually bullet proof, fire proof, and will maintain an comfortable indoor temperature of 64 degrees in the summer time.

And it’s not like there is any shortage on used plastic bottles out there. Here are some statistics from treehugger.com:

To build a two bedroom, 1200 square foot home, it takes about 14,000 bottles.

The United States throws away enough plastic bottles to build 9257 of these 2 bedroom houses per day! That’s just over 3.35 million homes, the same number of homeless people in America.

Many people in third world countries have taken up building homes out of plastic bottles, from Africa to Asia. Perhaps the trend will catch on in America and all of those bottles will stop ending up in the landfills. Wouldn’t they be better off housing the homeless? Kinda like all those empty houses scattered all over the country?

Soooo cool! Why are we not doing this?! 

Somebody call Jeff Goldblum! 

A CROW TRIED TO GO IN OUR CLASSROOM AND HE HAD A PEN

You’ve all just like, completely skipped over the possibility that this crow has seen people using pens in this room, found one, and is trying to return it. There’s been videos of crows picking up sweet wrappers and stuff and placing them in bins after seeing humans put their litter in bins. I really do believe that this crow is trying to return the pen and that is ADORABLE AS HELL. 

Another cool crow deal: Once, when trying to assess if crows could reason and use tools, scientists had two crows who didn’t know each other each take a wire from a table (one was hooked, one was straight) and try to grab meat from a bottle with it. The crows could see each other, though they had separate bottles. Only the straight wire worked for this, so they hypothesized that if crows could reason, the second trial would have the two crows fighting over the straight wire. The second trial started and, to the surprise of the scientists, the two crows both went for the bent wire, one held it down and the other unbent it. They both got meat out of their bottles. They came to a peaceful solution without verbal communication. Crows are probably smarter than we are.

I love crows. Bird behavior in general interests me and corvids especially have shown really high levels of intelligence.

There’s a video on youtube somewhere where a thirsty little crow is at an amusement park, and he finds some humans with a water bottle. He starts pecking at the cap and at first the people didn’t catch on, but he kept persisting, trying to get at the cap. It took a little bit for the humans to get it but they unscrewed the cap for him, and filled it with water and he drank from it. The crow was so used to seeing people drinking out of these magical liquid containers and he knew exactly where it came out of and was able to communicate what exactly he wanted.

Planet of the Crows

Crows = the best birds. 

Coooooooool! 

Funny! Our Fossils summer campers would love this one!

…and remember that brilliance comes in many shapes and sizes. you’re changing the world by being yourself! 

Steve Jobs’ speech at Stanford University - June 2005

Inspiration from Steve Jobs. 

Lemony Snicket (via dailydoseofbookssauce)

Her teacher told me that: “At school, we only talk about school. The children need something to help them forget about what happened.” When I asked her what was the best thing she’d learned so far, she said: "My ABCDs and my 1234s."  (Tongping Internally Displaced Persons Site, Juba, South Sudan)

"Researchers at the University of Western Australia decided to revamp the way they studied Viking remains. Previously, researchers had misidentified skeletons as male simply because they were buried with their swords and shields. (Female remains were identified by their oval brooches, and not much else.) By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons.”

Women have always fought. We have always been there, ‘contributing to history’. Our own, modern sexism contributes to the erasure of it.

(Bolding mine)

"We have always been there, ‘contributing to history’. Our own, modern sexism contributes to the erasure of it."

YAY! It’s Friday!

Robert M. Sapolsky (via pridejoyetc)

HUMP DAY!

Lunchboxdoodles is our newest obsession! It is our chance to get our own inspirational and fun doodle every day!