Observation sheets bomb; Bird poops everywhere

Well, those optimistically prepared Observation Sheets did not turn out exactly as we hoped. I may have anticipated a troop of field biologists, each bringing me a weighty notebook bursting with sketches of new species. In fact there were only two sheets filled out at all.
So, the Observation Sheets were a successful experiment.
Remember the case of my friend Mike. His team had finished six months of hard work on a massive new software release. They offered it to a separate group for a week-long testing session. After a week of pounding and pummelling, the testers could not find a single defect. Hmmm, grumbles Mike, that was a really bad week. All that time expended and we didn't find any defects?
The launch of Observation Sheets has, by contrast, been an excellent experiment.
When you have new data, and you want to know what it meant or what to do about it, one thing to do is create a LOT of explanations. Later you can throw out all the ones that don't work.
Let's see.
The level of returns was low because . . .

• Data recording is too advanced for 6- year olds
  
• You have to offer the exercise more than once, or otherwise publicize and encourage it
  
• Data recording misses the point, because it does not add to the child's experience. Asking for a written followup just adds overhead to what would otherwise be the pure excitement of learning and discovery
  
• Data recording must be taught by example. You need to be right there with (just one or three) children and a caterpillar (not in Science Circle), and say "heeey, here's how I would write a Caterpillar Observation Sheet. Do you want to try one while I try one?".
  
• [ your hypothesis here ]
  
• ..
  

There's also the story of the baseball scout who discovers a new pitcher on a college team. The pitcher throws a perfect game. Not only are there no runs, hits, or errors, but in fact he strikes out every batter. On three pitches. In fact, no batter even made contact with the ball except for a single foul ball in the seventh inning. The scout phones his boss in wild excitement. The response: "Forget about this pitcher. We already have pitchers. But for crying out loud get me the name of the fellow who hit the foul ball!"

Which brings me to the two Observation Sheets that did get filled in. There was not a word about caterpillars or snail eggs on them. They were instead filled with questions. Lots and lots of questions. Beautifully written. One sheet held as many questions about sharks as could possibly be crammed onto a page. And the "your sketch here" boxes were filled with shark pictures.
There's something good here. Let me take awhile to figure out what it is.

My Discovery To Share was a caterpillar that looks like Bird Poop. All our young scientists were able to explain immediately and enthusastically why looking like Bird Poop has positive survival benefit if you are a caterpillar. They went on to point out that, if you are such a caterpillar, and you move around too fast at the wrong moment, you have wrecked your disguise.
Here's the bird poop caterpillar happily chomping on my kumquat tree. Click on the photo to zoom in for a closer view.

Kid Science Humor: The day after this class, a handful of students saw me on the school yard and called me excitedly. "Come over here! We've found a caterpillar!". When I went over to see, they showed me . . a genuine bird poop. Guffaws were shared all around.

My Dear Watson, Do Not Just Look: Instead, Observe

Caterpillars have been appearing all over, and Montessori students have been capturing them and examining them and sharing them.
I found a very nice field guide to caterpillars at our beloved public library, and brought it in. It is on the classroom Library Books shelf. Also, I have offered Observation Sheets to those who want to make a record of what they found. The idea is that when you fill out a sheet like this (answering a few boilerplate questions, making a sketch from nature, and composing comments or observations of your own), you sharpen your observation skills.





There are more observation sheets over near the microscope, where we have a batch of snail eggs quietly developing in a jar of water. You could in theory fill out a new sheet every couple of days, as these eggs will look different every time you come back to them. Snail eggs are completely transparent and you can see the embryonic snail as it develops from a simple yellow dot to a comma to a squiggly thing to an actual snail.

Dang, that's a big turtle

Sometimes in science you just put down all the textbooks and the questions and the hypotheses and the reasoning, and just enjoy looking at something.
Sometimes you get the best discoveries that way.

Shortly before class I was on my way to the pond to look for something interesting to bring in, and hey presto! there was this whopper of a turtle walking across the field.

We had the usual Questions and Discoveries and so forth, but the turtle in the center of Classroom Circle was pretty much the whole class. A subliminal lesson was: sometimes you have to wait, quietly, for something to happen, and your patience is rewarded. In this case, of course, what you wait for is the turtle deciding to come out of its shell and start moving.

"Although alarmed, the students did not panic as the monstrous beast approached."

Questions, Pond Life, Irony

Yes. Fresh questions in a fresh empty Question Box. It's working!

We began with our Snail Shell question person of last week. Pleased to see she remembers asking the question. Remembers? One might say, Is Very Persistent. This reminds me of an episode I saw a couple years ago that really impressed me. Primavera Primary Kid #1, we'll call him Johnny, has done something that really annoyed Primavera Primary Kid #2, whom we'll call Sally. Knocked over her dolls, or punched her, I don't remember. Anyway Sally knows the Primavera Peacemaking Rules. She has a right to say her piece, and by gosh Johnny is gonna hear it. She's after him. Johnny's taking evasive action, trying to hide behind the swing set, but Sally's not having any of that. She's gonna track him down like Javert until she gets her chance to say "when you punched me, you really hurt my feelings". She persists, and - - with or without help from the Guide - - she corners him and has a conversation. After which, the incident is closed, and I don't think Johnny punched her again after that.
Our peacemaking kids - - they're tough. Don't cross them.
Where was I?
Oh. Tenacious. Our very tenacious Snail Girl was right on the spot making sure I remembered her Snail Shell question. Yes, she got her Snail Shell answer, plus two shiny Snail Books from the library just in case. Actually she was not fully content with the answer so she asked again the next day to make sure. Persistent! Excellent!

Also in response to fresh new questions, I brought in an iceberg (okay, my iceberg was only eight inches across, and I made it myself in the freezer) to illustrate how the Titanic could have whanged into the underwater portion of the iceberg without actually reaching the visible part.
Also, because of the Leeches issue of a few weeks ago, I had tried to catch a leech in the pond near my house. I thought I had one – a quarter inch long, wiggly and stretchy, but on closer examination via the microscope he proved not to be a leech. Naturally we rigged up the microscope => camera => TV system to show him off in class as he swam around in his dixie cup. Here are a few snapshots of the Primavera Platyhelminth:

Here's an item I didn't have time to show off in class - - I just like it. You know those mats of sort of slimy algae at the sunny end of the pond? Here's what they look like up close.

I noticed an irony about the classroom, and the issue of order and decorum. At some point there seems to be a level of excitement which makes it impossible (impossible, that is, if your first initial is not "D") to rein the room back to silence. What I finally pieced together was: though I end the class wondering why things seem to have been driven slightly out of control, the irony is that I spent the preceding 44 minutes deliberately trying to get everybody excited!

A minor correction

(3-28-07) Well, that's what they call it in the stock market when the thrill ride pauses for a week. A correction. And in a sense we had an intentional course correction. Somewhere in the midst of all the exciting demonstrations we were so busy blowing things up that we never had time to open the Question Box. Big mistake. Because guess what is the real source for good demos? Yeah.
In that regard the Coke/Mentos demo was definitely off course. Anyway, entirely by design we had a session with no particularly dramatic demos. (I did bring in an actual I-found-it-myself-not-from-a-store fossil, from the creek behind Dittmar Rec Center). What we need here is to get back to the questions. So today's agenda was to dig out the entries languishing in the question box. Some of these were unfortunately getting pretty old. I don't want to have an Average Response Time in excess of about 13 days. Not good for the Question Box.
Questions were about cement trucks, flying cars, explosions, worldwide distribution of volcanoes, and -- hmm -- "Why does my Mommy sometimes run late".

Anyway, with less of a spectacular show, and more sit-and-talk time, the obvious risk is - - wiggliness. Yup. We got it.
But.
We also have a nice clean EMPTY question box ready for fresh stuff.
And, to my delight, one of the shyest class members came right up to me to ask about snail shells.