October in Salem, MA is something to see. Throughout the year, there is pretty consistent interest in the city’s dark history as the epicenter of the “Witch Hunts.” A goodly portion of the downtown area is dedicated to tourism centered around this past. Halloween only takes the experience to a whole new level. Halloween lasts at least a month in the city, and people come from all over the world to visit allegedly haunted locations, places associated with the witch trials, and various merchants of all things occult or mystical. I did not want to focus on Halloween, per se. However, I decided to chose a topic that was evocative of mystery. I chose to augment our standard curricula with a section on owls. I decided that owls were real, flesh and blood creatures, unlike the imaginary witches which plagued the city 400 years ago. Owls have that dark, sinister, and spooky air about them, but they also provide a great opportunity to study life cycles, food chains, animal physiology, and the like. So, owls it was….

October Focus Table: Owls

October Focus Table: Owls