After a longer than anticipated delay, here are the answers to the circus animal poop identification challenge from back in August.
While there are some handy flowcharts and poop identification picture on the web, I haven’t yet found such a guide for African or Asian wildlife. Since many, if not most, of the high traffic circus animals are from those two continents, that leaves me with rationales for the pictured poop that are a little more hand-wave-y than I’d like. Animal poop experts who would like to give us more information about why these particular animals poop the way they do are cordially invited to hold forth in the comments!
Category Archives: Kids and science
Friday Sprog Blogging: I owe my soul to the classsroom store.
In which we become acquainted with one aspect of the classroom culture in the younger Free-Ride offspring’s second grade.
Younger offspring: In my class, we earn ten play cents for coming to school on time, and I earned sixty play cents for bringing back those signed forms, and for bringing in my emergency card, and for bringing all my school supplies.
Dr. Free-Ride: You get paid a bonus just for being on time?
Younger offspring: It’s not real money.
Elder offspring: So what do you do with it? What can you use it for?
Random bullets of new school year.
- The sprogs were beside themselves with excitement yesterday on the eve of the first day of a new school year. Will this excitement persist? Will the first homework assignments deflate it? It remains to be seen.
Friday Sprog Blogging: double trouble.
Today is “Twin Day” on the last day of daycamp before the new school year.
Of course, the younger Free-Ride offspring was very enthusiastic about the idea of dressing like twins with the elder Free-Ride offspring. The elder Free-Ride offspring, on the other hand …
Friday Sprog Blogging (bonus reader participation issue): circus detectives.
Yesterday, the Free-Ride family visited Circus World. It was a full day, and we’re still working on digesting the experience, but there were some animal performers that made an impression, including dogs, a pony, a camel, and an elephant.
This put us in mind of our visit with Bora last July to the Circus exhibit at the Lawrence Hall of Science.
Friday Sprog Blogging: overheard on a (buggy) nature walk.
The nature walk in question happened mere hours ago, at Kettle Moraine State Forest (Southern Unit), where we had occasion to notice that the local conditions support a much larger population of flying (and biting) insects than the Free-Ride family is accustomed to.
Younger offspring: What happens if a mosquito bites your eye?
Friday Sprog Blogging: preparing for Kids Day at SLAC.
Thanks to longtime friend of the Free-Rides LO, the elder Free-Ride offspring will be participating in Kids Day @ SLAC, 2008 today.
Of course, the younger Free-Ride offspring is chagrined to be two years too young to participate as well. “You know, I’m about to start second grade, and I’m going to need to know a lot of science!”
It might have been a persuasive argument … except for the fact that we’ve already seen the district’s second grade science curriculum.
In any event, in preparation for today’s activities, we took some time yesterday evening to review the carefully compiled safety information:
Friday Sprog Blogging: just add water.
One afternoon, the Free-Ride offspring were in the mood for some spur of the moment experimentation.
So, we cleared the kitchen table, rummaged through the cupboards, and came up with a plan.
The question we decided to investigate:
What happens to different dry ingredients when you add water to them?
Friday Sprog Blogging: random bullets of sprog.
Because it’s been one of those weeks.
*The elder Free-Ride offspring conveys heartfelt thanks to those who provided quantum mechanical book recommendations in the comments on this post — and to Super Sally who sent three of those books as birthday presents. The elder offspring is about two chapters into Alice in Quantumland right now and pronounces it good. “There’s an electron bank, but the more energy you borrow, the faster you have to pay back the loan.”
We have not yet located the science content in the other print-based present that went over well (Emily the Strange comic books). I’m confident we’ll find some, though. Everything has science content if you look hard enough.
Girls, boys, and math.
You’ve probably already heard the news last week that a study published in Science indicates that the gender gap between girls and boys in mathematical performance may be melting faster than the polar ice caps. The study, “Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance” by Janet S. Hyde et al., appears in the July 25, 2008 issue of Science (behind a paywall). [1]