Waste Not, Want Not - Leaning into Experiential Learning

This past weekend we attended an outdoor BBQ. The hosts were cooking a lamb on a spit and as the afternoon wound down, Jack asked if he could have the sheep skull. The hosts graciously wrapped it up in tin foil on it and we officially had a science experiment in our hands, all to prepare a skull that Jack will most likely use for display, and possibly in one of his home horror movies.

Taking the skull of the animal was a good lesson on using all of an animal, wasting nothing, biology, and animal anatomy. If you are a little squeamish, you may want to skip the next section.

The final product, pre-water based water-based polyurethane spray application

Cleaning and Preparing the Skull

The first thing we did when we got home was to degrease the skull by thoroughly boiling it in water. We did this for around 3 hours, taking it out of the water every half hour or so to clean off  meat and skin as it loosened. Soon it became time to remove the eyeball and soft tissue inside of the eye socket. Jack refused to do this with me, but Molly watched me prepare the left side and then completed the right eye removal on her own. My time working as a butcher assistant in a grocery store is paying off in parenting, who knew right?  

I didn't want to drill into the skull to remove the brain, so instead I used a method employed by the ancient Egyptians when preparing mummies, and I pulled it out through the nasal cavity. While I didn't have specific tools for this, the chopstick I used worked quite well. Yes, I threw the chopstick out after.

Next we used forks, butter knives, and even a toothbrush to get the remainder of the meat and skin off the skull.

Most of the way through boiling, degreasing, and cleaning

Bleaching the Skull

I didn't have enough hydrogen peroxide on hand to completely immerse the skull, so it sat in the freezer overnigh while we awaited more supplies. The next day we put it into a tall, narrow container and left it to soak. I'd read online that it could take up to 24 hours to lighten a deer head, and since a sheep is considerably smaller, we monitored it closely so not to damage the bones. About 12 hours later we removed the bones from the peroxide soak (while wearing rubber gloves) and then rinsed them well in water to remove all traces of the peroxide. Later this week we will attempt to urethane the skull to better preserve it and wire the lower jaw to the skull.

This was an unusual learning experience, and I hope that it doesn't got moldy, but if it does, we'll throw it out having learned a lot in the process. I am happy that we took this opportunity for some real, scientific experiential learning, even if my Google search history this week has become a little suspect a la Dexter.

What unusual kid-led learning experiences have you leaned into?

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed - First Day of School

Today is supposed to be the first day of school for my kids. We opted for virtual learning until they can be vaccinated and made this decision known to our school board a month ago. This morning my kids got up, dressed and posed for their annual back to school photo in front of our house. The thing is, we've been waiting on our online class assignment all week, and news flash, it still hasn't come.

My kids have been patient. I've cautiously paid attention to deadlines of when we'll hear by, and only followed up, promptly, after they've passed. I've been reassured time and time again that online kids are not an afterthought, but as I hear of other kids attending in person, and even other kids getting their online placements, it's hard for this not to feel personal.

I get that it's hard to plan classrooms with parents changing their minds between virtual and in person learning as numbers of COVID cases in our community rises, but we made up our minds long ago and so far, crickets. I've heard nothing but excuses, and this is feeling unacceptable.

Today my kids are playing, cleaning, drawing, and most of all waiting, refreshing their online Brightspace accounts to see if something, anything, has been posted. It hasn't.

With COVID-19, all of us are used to things being cancelled, it's just this constant state of disappoinment that really getting to me. Here's hoping tomorrow is a lot smoother. Until then we'll just cross our fingers and hit refresh...Rant Over.