Sure, we still have about a week of July left, but those days are getting shorter and soon the classrooms will be filling up again.
Which means that it’s a pretty good time for public school teachers (in the U.S.*) to start thinking about what they’d like to accomplish in those classrooms, and whether submitting a classroom project proposal to DonorsChoose could help them secure the funds to make exciting ideas into real educational experiences.
Before the students are lining up outside the classroom, check out the DonorsChoose blog, which includes:
Category Archives: Kids and science
Friday Sprog Blogging: thinking in three dimensions.
The Free-Ride offspring end up listening to a lot of public radio in the car; they can’t control the radio tuner from the back seat. Since this listening includes Car Talk, both sprogs already think of cars as systems to trouble-shoot, even though the eldest is still seven years away (at least) from being a licensed driver.
And the Free-Ride offspring enjoy “the puzzler”. However, they express the occasional quibble …
Elder offspring: Was that Tom Magliozzi who was just talking, or Ray?
Younger offspring: Tom.
Elder offspring: Well, Tom said something that doesn’t really make sense.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh?
Elder offspring: When he said that the Summertime puzzler is also for kids on school vacation, so their brains aren’t shriveled up when school starts again?
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah?
Elder offspring: Healthy brains are supposed to have those wrinkles.
Dr. Free-Ride: They’re called “convolutions” if my memory serves me right.*
Elder offspring: They make more room for neurons, so the brain can do more thinking.
Dr. Free-Ride: OK.
Elder offspring: Which means that really, the Summertime puzzler is helping keep kids’ brains from smoothing out, not shriveling up.
Saturday Sprog Blogging: fish behavior.
[Pardon the delay!]
Watching the fish tank in the pediatrician’s waiting room:
Younger offspring: Those fish are playing tag!
Dr. Free-Ride: It kind of looks like tag, doesn’t it?
Younger offspring: Except since they don’t have hands to touch each other, I think they’re using their mouths.
This week, Friday Sprog Blogging …
… is postponed until Saturday. I have to get final grades for my summer seminar computed and posted by midnight.
With luck, I’ll have this week’s conversation up by Saturday morning. It’ll be like Saturday morning cartoons, but with fewer commercials for Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs (or whatever breakfast cereal the kids with cool moms are eating these days).
To tide you over, a few animal drawings from the younger Free-Ride offspring:
Friday Sprog Blogging: dramatic developments in gene splicing.
The Free-Ride offspring are currently engrossed in a “creative dramatics” workshop, wherein they are learning all sorts of things about acting, characterization, costuming, and related matters in order to write, rehearse, stage, and perform a play. My kids are show people! Except that somehow, even when they’re being show people, the science wheels in their heads are still turning …
Younger offspring: We did an exercise where each group came up with a scene about one of the four food groups.
Elder offspring: My group did “dairy”. I was a brown cow who needed milking.
Younger offspring: My group did “meat”.
Dr. Free-Ride: And you a vegetarian! What were you in the scene?
Younger offspring: I was a cow that was used to make the cow-chicken.
Dr. Free-Ride: Say what?
Elder offspring: A cow-chicken. Half chicken, half cow.
Quantum mechanics for fourth graders.
I had my kids with me at my office and needed to keep them occupied for a small chunk of time while I attended to business.
The younger offspring immediately called dibs on the “Celebrating Chemistry” markerboard.
The elder offspring, creeping up on 9 years old, asked plaintively, “What can I do?”
I scanned my office bookshelves. Given that I am trying to minimize the number of frustrating parent-teacher conferences in the coming school year, I passed right by the Nietzsche. After a moment’s hesitation, I pulled down my copy of David Z. Albert’s Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Handing it to my elder offspring, I said, “Try reading Chapter 1. I’m pretty sure you know all the words in it, and maybe you’ll find it interesting.”
The verdict, 16 pages later:
Friday Sprog Blogging: the element of surprise.
In case anyone remembers a post back in February which featured drawings by the elder Free-Ride offspring inspired by this kids’ book about the elements …
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, you found that book! I’ve been looking for it.
Younger offspring: Yeah, I’m taking it with me to [the house of the grandparents who lurk but seldom comment] so I can read it while I’m there.
Dr. Free-Ride: But I was going to review it while you were gone.
Younger offspring: But I want to read it so I can learn about elements.
Dr. Free-Ride: Won’t you be too busy playing with the cat and bugging [Elder offspring] to read it?
Younger offspring: No, I’ll have time to read it and do those other things, too.
Dr. Free-Ride: What about the Friday Sprog Blog?
Younger offspring: When you and [Dr. Free-Ride’s better half] come to visit for the wedding maybe we can talk about something science-y.
In fact, when we arrived before the family wedding, this is what we found taped to the wall of our guest quarters:
Friday Sprog Blogging: competing expertise.
Elder offspring: Why do mice have long, naked tails?
Dr. Free-Ride: Why do the tails of rats look so much like earthworms?
Elder offspring: That doesn’t answer my question.
Dr. Free-Ride: Sorry, I thought we were just making a list of life’s mysteries.
* * * * *
Friday Sprog Blogging: silkworms.
The Free-Ride offspring made it through another school year. This year, we are participating in the ritual sending-home-of-living-things from the science classroom. Instead of scoring guppies, however, we now have a little container of eggs …
Dr. Free-Ride: I want to know about that little container you have in my fridge. What’s the story?
Elder offspring: Well, there’s silkworm eggs. They were laid by a silkworm.
Dr. Free-Ride: And?
Elder offspring: They’ll hatch into silkworms next Spring.
Dr. Free-Ride: Next Spring they will? So they’ll stay eggs between now and then?
Elder offspring: Yes. But we need to keep them in the fridge.
Dr. Free-Ride: And not accidentally eat them or something.
Elder offspring: No!!
Dr. Free-Ride: OK.
Friday Sprog Blogging: extinction.
Have I mentioned before that children are vectors of disease? The Free-Ride offspring are no exception in this regard. As a result, I’ve been laid low with fever and assorted flu-like symptoms.
Sadly, this did not result in an edifying and amusing conversation about the workings of the immune system. Maybe when I’m better.
However, I did manage to overhear (and transcribe) a conversation the sprogs were having without me.