Flower dissection is my favorite.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I post a picture and just a few words...sort of a 104 project instead of a 365 project.
Sonia and Zoe's science course this year is botany, so we dissected a few flowers this past week. I must say that I infinitely prefer this to the kind of dissection one does when studying animals.
(speaking of which, when I posted on instagram about this, I discovered that the #dissection hashtag is filled with all sorts of not-pleasant things to look at. Darn medical student instagrammers! 😉
I kind of think the pollen may have permanently stained my cutting board, so I'm glad I used one I don't love. 😉
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P.S. The winners of the needle felting kits from Fun.com are Annie, Anne, Rebecca, Krista, and Patricia. Congrats! And check your email.
I don't think I ever remember dissecting a flower when I was in school. Other dissections I remember....
cough *baby pigs* cough
I *loved* dissection in high school biology. The pigs were the most interesting by far!
A baby pig - how horrible!! We did frog dissection when I was in high school way back in the Middle Ages. I was surprised to learn recently this kind of dissection is still the norm. I thought computer programs or models would have replaced this disgusting practice ages ago. Give me flowers any day.
We did frogs and fetal pigs in school, ok it was more than 10 years ago. I found the pigs especially to be fascinating. Maybe gross on my kitchen table, but very interesting in school. (And no, I didn't go into a medical field!)
My friend dissected a worm and a cow's eyeball in honors biology.
Yeah, we did them when I was in high school (at home, no less!), but that was probably about 20 years ago now, as in 2016, I'll have been out of high school for 20 years.
(What??)
I wasn't referring to the ick factor. I'm surprised that no one else is bothered by raising animals to be dissected by school kids.
Sorry - I hit the send button too soon. Should read "I wasn’t referring to the ick factor. I’m surprised that no one else is bothered by raising animals to be dissected by school kids....when humane options are available."
I'm not sure what I think about that, to be honest. And oddly enough, the idea of harvesting fetal pigs for dissection bugs me more than the use of frogs and worms for dissection.
That's not really super consistent of me, though!
Botany is very interesting, though don't discount biology. It's a really important science. Heck, all science is pretty cool.
When my wife and I have kids and homeschool, we plan on making sure they get plenty of science. Too many kids, especially girls, are not given proper STEM education and come out of high school knowing how to add and subtract and only a general idea of the world around them.
(We dissected cats when I was in high school. I was actually glad to miss the baby pigs, though.)
My daughter works for a florist. She told me that they always pinch off the pollen thingies (I'm sure you now know the proper term) when you get lilies, so they don't drop pollen on the furniture.
I love this! I've taught middle and high school sciences and the flowers are always so much fun. While I probably won't ever go back into the classroom, I'd love to do this with my own kids one day. This is way better than the zoology ones you'll soon encounter!
Take a sharp razor blade and cut a flower in half vertically (help your kids with this!). That really helps you see how similar the flower is to human reproductive anatomy--I remember that lesson very vividly from school--how interconnected everything is. Miraculous!
Yep, we did that as we went further on in our dissection process...found the ovules and such. The lily is so big, everything is super easy to see!
A little straight bleach on the cutting board might do the trick.