Homeschool High School Biology: Prepared Slides of Protists

 

The Amscope prepared slides of bacteria were garbage, but the prepared slides of protists are MUCH better!

They can't replace the real-life observation that we'll be doing later, when we look at lake water through the microscope (OMG don't ever drink lake water, because it is chock-full of protists!!!), but looking at prepared slides is a good way for a student to study anatomy, and specifically to get used to--and see the differences between!--an illustrated diagram of an organism and an actual example of that organism. Real-life critters never look exactly like their diagrams!

In 2017, when the kids were still older elementary/middle school but it was becoming clear that Will, at least would likely want to homeschool through high school, I did OMG TONS of research before buying this microscope, the Levenhuk 320, and I have been so happy with it! This specific model is actually discontinued now, I bought it so long ago, but honestly I'd trust anything from the Levenhuk site. A year later, I even bought the digital camera attachment, and it is also so great. The user interface is very dated, a little clunky, and extremely non-intuitive--

--but once you click around enough to figure out what you're supposed to do, it's fairly seamless to switch between the optical eyepiece and the camera, and to take both photos and videos of the cool stuff you're looking at.

At each magnification, I like to use the optical eyepiece to observe first, then pull that eyepiece out and switch in the camera eyepiece, already plugged into my laptop and set up in the software. Then I can adjust the focus if I need to, and then I can start taking photos and videos.

Here's an example of the genus Euglena at 400x:

If you scroll to the bottom of this Wikipedia article, you can see a video of a Euglena that looks very similar to this slide. It would be better if the slide had additional examples of Euglena when it's not a sphere, though.

Here's a Volvox at 100x:

The large encasement isn't a single cell, like a prokaryote, but instead a gelatinous structure that the cells hang out in. The staining on this slide is a little weird, because Volvox would usually be green.

The best prepared slide in this group is the Spirogyra. Here it is at 40x:

And here it is at 100x:

There are some other really good examples of Spirogyra here.

I sourced an illustrated diagram of Euglena, Volvox, and Spirogyra, and Syd's assignment will be to sketch the microscope views at 40x and 100x of each slide, then label the sketches with the features she can identify, using the diagrams as references. I think this will be a good refresher on how to use the microscope and how to sketch microscope observations.

And then it's off to the lake!