Thursday 16 August 2012

Braaaains

Littletree’s long fascination with science endures on… she asked me if we can do some dissections for a unit on biology, and somehow tying with the recent fad of Zombies – she asked if we can get some brains.

The last time we were shopping at the local organic butcher, when the butcher asked what we’d like, and Littletree piped up with “Braaaaaaains”. Luckily Unfortunately, the organic butcher’s was out of brains that day…

But Littletree didn’t let up, so the next time I went to the supermarket, I looked in the meat section, but couldn’t find any brains. So I went up to the deli counter and asked the woman, “excuse me, do you have any brains?” She looked at me like I was mad, I quickly realised what I’d said and followed up with, “I mean, I looked over in the meat section where the other organ meats are, I could see livers and kidneys and hearts and stuff, but no brains…”

The woman was still looking at me like I was mad and said they don’t keep them in stock any more. I explained, “My daughter is home schooled – we don’t want to eat them, we want to dissect them for biology studies”. This seemed to endear me to the deli-counter woman, who directed me to try out the butcher across from the supermarket.

Off I went to the butcher… The lad working behind the counter asked me what I’d like and I said:

“Do you have any brains?”

He shook his head and said “Sorry, no one in here’s got any brains!”

Gotta love Aussie humour. When I explained that it was for a home-schooling science project, he was very helpful and found some sheep’s brains out in the back freezer. Littletree was most happy.

***warning*** From this point on, the post contains graphic pictures of a scientific nature (extremely squeamish people may like to instead click through to this post about Littletree acting like an extremely cute cat http://majikfaerie.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/littlecat.html)

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Littletree eagerly got out her science lab kit, scrubbed up, and set up her equipment, checked a medical text book for tips, and started with the dissection

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She was fascinated to see all the quadrants, how it has very clear left and right hemispheres, the lobes and such

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Then she decided to make some slides and look at various bits in her microscope

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Most importantly, Littletree can see why a brain is called “a noodle”.

3 comments:

  1. ROFL @ "noodle" :)

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  2. Wow Littletree is a perfect example of how home schooling creates a thirst for knowledge. It's fantastic how excited is is about learning new things.

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  3. thanks! I think the thirst for knowledge is already there in children, it's just that schooling tends to suppress it, whereas conscious home schooling fosters it.

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Thanks for your lovely words, witty banter and entertaining discussion :)