This Throwback Thursday post is brought to you by Mission Friends, preschool education, and great activities for kids.
Hammer, safety glasses, wood, apron, nails. Real tools. Check.
Plus supervision.
Add Chelsie, age 5. Ready to go and do some world building. Figuratively (pretend play and exploration) and literally (girls can do anything they dream, including learning to hammer nails and build). I offered this activity to my group of preschoolers in Mission Friends. I never shied away from plans some considered slightly dangerous: hammering nails, melting crayons on a food warming tray, chopping softer fruits and veggies with butter knives. And the kids never let me down. They LOVED doing grown up jobs and took their activities seriously.
How do preschoolers and young children learn? By doing, exploring, experimenting, evaluating, planning, making mistakes, trying again.
My way of doing preschool.
“Play is the highest form of research.” Albert Einstein
Pumpkins are some of my favorite fall sights. Add colorful falling leaves, the crunch and swish of piles swirling as I walk, brisk air, silver mornings, and bustling life preparing for winter’s rest. Autumn is the time to stock up, cozy up, and cuddle in to enjoy hot soup, warm drinks, and wild weather. Who’ll join me?
What signs of fall do you enjoy? Add your favorites in the comment section. Bonus points for haiku!
Happy book birthday, Laura and Jennie! What an adorable picture book! I know I can’t wait to get my hands on it and read about Porcupine and friends. And I hear there is a great pie recipe at the end, so let me at it!
Congratulations!
Note to writers: This interview is chock full of information about the Laura’s publishing journey. I loved learning more about the process.
A dear friend (college buddy and fellow Jello Molder) recently shared her lovely home and serene garden with several of our solidly middle-aged Jigglers. I could sit for hours beside this potted fountain, just resting. Listening. Dreaming.
Or wondering. Who lives beneath the leaves? Besides the dog drinking with noisy laps, who else visits for refreshment? Birds, squirrels, cats, frogs? Do bees bumble along the edges and butterflies dance above the leaves? Do raccoons dare to stop for a wash of dinner? Maybe spiders consider nearby locations to capture insects who venture in for damp moisture. I could imagine larger wildlife guests if the high fence disappeared. Do children press against the fence, hoping to spy the source of splashing? Are passing adults desperately wishing to sit and ease their minds beside the talking water?
A drink of serenity goes far to refresh a heart heavy with life.
This haiku is inspired by my next-door-pasture mates. Three geldings, only 2 of whom I know names. So I lump them as dark, milk, and white chocolates. My 3 chocolates. Dark is in charge. Dark and milk are highest on the horse pecking order. White comes in last, as youngest and newest to the herd of boys and is always thrust away from attention by flattened ears and threatening postures. He of the white chocolate is the most friendly and curious. He’s always up for hanging out over the fence for a chat and a scratch.
I love them all, my chocolates.
P.S. Not really MY chocolates. A girl can dream…
Who lives in your next door pasture? I’d love to read a haiku about your neighbors. Or you can just tell who lives next door. No haiku required! Do they make you think of chocolate?
Not THE Jimmy Hoffa, but my own skin-less, flesh-less version.
One quarter during my junior year of college at Western Washington University, I had the BEST science course! I loved that class. We determined our own grades by the project choices and number of selections we made on a preset list of assignments. Since I was always aiming for top grades, I made high marks my goal.
The final choice (between getting an A or a B) was removing the flesh from a small rodent to expose the skeleton. Actually, there was a second choice, but I don’t remember what it was. I spent many intense moments in consideration as I walked to and fro across campus. Choice A or B? I just had to do that final project to push myself to an A.
As I was wavering on how to get a rodent (rat or mouse) and how I was ever going to ‘kill’ it in order to dissect the flesh/skin/fur from its’ skeleton, I practically stepped on a rat. I was racing to class, when BAM, there was a barely moving rat lying on the pavement right outside my dorm! It was up against Old Edens, a gorgeous brick, ivy-covered behemoth of a building. I think the poor thing fell off and brained itself. Barely breathing or moving. Four feet in the grave.
Should I or shouldn’t I??? Choice A? I had to choose A when the opportunity presented itself. Nearly late, I raced to my room, grabbed a plastic bag, ‘rescued’ the rodent from the cement, put it in the dorm freezer, and headed to class. I really don’t think it was going to come around, so slowly freezing to death seemed pretty humane to me.
Now I was in possession of a full-sized dead frozen rat-sicle. In. The. Dorm. Freezer. (Don’t tell anyone, I’m sure there were regulations against it.) Time to earn that A.
How to Make a Rat Skeleton Display
1. Borrow science tools and remove as much of the ‘not bones’ parts as possible. This was a bit tricky with the tail and tiny toes, not to mention the dull scapel.
2. Attach rat skeleton (in my case, Jimmy Hoffa) to a piece of balsam wood to hold it in one position. I used straight pins.
3. Take rat skeleton to a flesh-eating insect colony. I also had the choice of boiling off the flesh, but ew. If frozen rat in the freezer in my dorm was bad, the smell of cooking rat would have been much worse! Besides, the tiny bones would have fallen apart or dissolved.
4. Let rat skeleton spend a minimum of one month in the insect colony.
Research Tip: I have no idea which type of insects Jimmy really visited, but best guess is a colony of dermestid beetles. Which, according to this post, can pick a skeleton clean in one day. No idea why Jimmy had to stay away from home for a month.
5. So, Jimmy went on a little trip to the flesh-eating insect container. There Jimmy spent a month of so while hundreds, or thousands, of little bugs combed his bones, picking off and eating leftover bits my scapel refused to move. He was almost perfectly clean when I picked him up from the vacation in Bug-Land. After writing an eye-witness account of his travels, I presented Jimmy and his journal to my professor.
Ta-da! I was awarded an A for my work in the science course. And I got to keep Jimmy. Where he lived in a ziplock bag for years until I couldn’t think of anything else to do with him and tossed him out. Poor Jimmy.
There you have it! Should you want to de-flesh a rodent skeleton, just find a colony of those flesh-eating bugs.
What crazy projects did you complete during your educational years?
