How are you connected to the ocean?

Take two breaths.

One came from the ocean.
Image Credit: Austin Tomlin, Creative Commons

Image Credit: Austin Tomlin, Creative Commons

It’s true! Roughly half of the oxygen we breathe is produced by phytoplankton, tiny single-celled plants that live in the sea. That fact alone means that you – and all life on Earth – depend on the ocean for survival every minute of every day. In fact, no matter how far we may live from the coast, the ocean is important to our daily lives in countless ways. The ocean stabilizes our climate and weather patterns and is vital to the global cycle that supplies us with clean drinking water. It provides seafood to millions of people, and studying the wild diversity of life beneath the waves has helped us produce medicines and other important products. For those who live near the water, the ocean offers direct opportunities for employment, transportation, and recreation.

Click here to celebrate Ocean and Water with Year of Science!

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Science Olympiad 2009

Here’s a quick recap of our 2009 Science Olympaid Journey:

On February 28, 2009 thirty-four bright and intelligent middle school students from Windy Ridge Middle School had the opportunity to represent the Central Region at the state Science Olympiad competition hosted at The University of Central Florida Campus.

These talented children competed against 63 other brilliant schools in various science competitions ranging from robotics, engineering, earth science, chemistry, anatomy, physics, geology, mechanical engineering and technology. The outcome was a first place victory for our Windy Ridge Scientists and then, the bad news, a scoring error put Windy Ridge at second place. The kids were of course disappointed, but being good sports took it all in stride and moved on.

On April 23, Windy Ridge got the news.. Windy Ridge has an opportunity to go to Nationals…. so, in three short weeks, the kids got busy learning their divisions, the parents got busy fundraising and we all left Orlando on May 14 for the time of our life experiences. Overall we were 41st at the National Competition, with our best placement of 7th for Elevated Bridge.

It has been my honor to watch the journey, the children, the parents all bond through this experience. Feel free to go on the blog for favorite moments from parents and students, visit the photos and maybe, just maybe, we can all do this again next year! A very special thank you to each and every parent for bringing their gifts to the team, the teachers for the encouragement they gave and the students for working so hard under pressure. And let not forget the sponsors for making it possible. It will be wonderful seeing our Science Olympiad Flag raised in the Windy Ridge School…… because we all know, our students are America’s future. Congratulations Science Olympiad Team 2008/09 you did it!

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