What, more whales?

science blog 13 September


These amazing children just keep asking original and deep questions (are any of us surprised by this?). I thought at least one of the topics - - pigment color as selective absorption of light - - was way tough for this age, but a some hours later a child basically re-explained the whole topic back to me using examples in the local environment.

Dolphins joined whales in the hit parade of topics. Three library books about whales are now on the classroom shelves pro tem.

The younger group decided on unanimous voice vote to spend science class in reading aloud. I read one of the whale books to them. Considering end-of-day fatigue, the fact that reading aloud is just plain fun (and very educational), and the excitement this group shows at the very sight of a fresh new book, this may become our modus operandi for some weeks.

The delightful blue mold from my fridgie is now on exhibit in the class microscope. It has also allowed us to add a third kingdom to our taxonomic tree.




Hmmm.. . kind of hard to make out . . . I think I'll make up a slide for the compound microscope.

No class; shrike

Alas, no science class yesterday as I was off travelling for work.

At least I can offer you this nice picture of a shrike in my backyard.

Fascinating article about early earth history

The earth would be a frozen snowball if not for those cute little archaebacteria . . .
Click

Old and young

We tried a different organizational approach where we had two science sessions, each with fewer children, instead of one session with the whole class. This felt like a big improvement. The younger group really had a dramatically different style of giving and receiving messages (messages including speaking, moving, acting. drawing) and it was nice to be able to use the right style with each group and not have anyone left out in the cold. Thanks to Amber and Deborah for their support, occupying the other half of the class.
The older ones got into an avid discussion on the flight of birds. I diagrammed the wing countour that is used both by birds and jet aircraft to take advantage of the Bernoulli effect. If you hear them telling you that the wing position of the vulture is a V for vulture, now you know where it comes from.
Whales continue to be a hot topic.
I brought in some library books, two on mammals in general and two on armadillos. These will be in the classroom for a few weeks. I can see we'll need whale books.

The younger ones were all over the mammal books like ants on a candy bar. We walked on our wrists the way anteaters walk. There was more about birds. I showed them how real chemists sniff noxious agents (such as vinegar).

Keep putting questions in the question box!

I'll be travelling next week. This means I cannot make it to Primavera for Wednesday science on the 20th. I hope I don't go into withdrawal.

How to post a comment

I've been hearing that it's confusing trying to post a comment the first time.

I tried it.

It's confusing.

Click here for some instructions and illustrations that should de-confuse it pretty well.

Pangolins Plus

We talked about Pangolins, Anteaters, Aardvarks.
The idea "they all have thin snouts and long sticky tongues to get at the ants for dinner" resonated well, but the idea "they are not closely related" seemed to be a little less exciting.
(The underlying concept is convergent evolution).
Anyway, we added them to the taxonomic tree and shared a number of pictures.



(Click on the thumbnails to expand).

We also had a live-action docudrama on how it was advantageous to be tall if you are leafy; then added peach trees to the taxonomic tree.

Taxonomy and wasp

Here's that taxonomy chart I mentioned. It looks like I'm going to run out of space too soon. I think I'll start over on a bigger piece of paper.

A particularly insightful and articulate student (that description applies to all of them!) asked:

- What does the line mean?

which gave me a chance to explain that the lines on the chart mean Is_A_Kind_Of.

I would like us to add pictures as we add entries on the chart. For example, right now we could use pictures of a bee, an ant, and a spider.

Just for fun, here's the wasp as your child can see it.