Blinded me with Science

Yes, and now you will hate me for getting THAT song stuck in your head.

But I'm the volunteer coordinator of the hands-on science project and I wanted to share one with you. Each grade level has a lesson designed to work with the curriculum and give the kids a lab experience to drive home the main thrust of the lessons. Last year I got sucked in, and I'm glad I did.

Sunday afternoon last year, at 2:30, Reyna calls me. She's in a panic. The science lesson has to be done Monday morning and she has no owl pellets to dissect. She has no idea of how to obtain said owl pellets. And is up the proverbial excrement stream sans means of locomotion.

"Come over," I say. "We'll figure something out," I say.

I dig up an old recipe for play dough and start rummaging in the pantry. Out comes pasta, jelly bellies, and rice. I hunt up the yard for dead grass, thanking JJ that he didn't bag the grass clippings. Which causes him to worry about me. But Reyna has arrived, desperate and not even slightly disturbed at all the mismatched junk on my counter.

We make up several colors of dough in batches, and start folding in the pasta; wheels, spaghetti, curly noodles. We add rice to other batches, along with grass and jelly bellies. Into some samples, we mix a little of both combinations.

Then we make a key.

Jelly bellies = berries
Rice = seeds
grass = grass (wow, that creativity shining through!)
wheels = skulls
rotini = leg bones
spaghetti = spines

So the end product is dozens of batches of play dough shaped like technicolor crap. Now with prizes inside!

In class the next day, we explain about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. Then we have the kids use plastic knives and carefully pry into the poop. They dig in with gusto, even after (or due to) hearing that these represent animal poop. They carefully consult their keys, then argue, debate and decide which type of animal they are tracking. The rule is that each group must decide on a corporate answer. Once they get their answer, they have to explain how they got it.

After we deal with animal poop, we move on to other ways of tracking animals, such as actual tracks. For that exercise, each student cuts out a set of seven animal tracks, from elephants to ducks to bunnies to bears. Then they have to glue the tracks onto a paper with different habitats represented; a farm, a savanna, a jungle, a field.

The teachers are impressed, the kids have a blast (and a year later can tell you all about that lesson) and Reyna is spared. I get to make up the whole thing from scratch, and teach it too. Oh, and a year later the second grade team is insisting on doing the lesson again, exactly as before, so my work is now built into the curriculum.

And me? I get to put that on a resume when looking for my drama teaching job. Because, not only can I create the shit and deliver the shit, I AM the shit.