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!
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