Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Homeschool High School

At its best, homeschooling is a major kick: fun, productive, informative, memory-making. We aren't going to discuss it at its worst because, well, I do that enough. Heh.

Anyway, my oldest is "in" the ninth grade. (I also will not take this time to discuss what grading does and does not do in the homeschooling world. Suffice it to say that if she were in a government school, she'd be in the ninth grade.) She is currently studying biology, which requires her to use the microscope and peer at things periodically.

I geek out over the microscope. There is nothing cooler. I take that back, but it is awesome fun to be able to look at things in a real microscope.

Today she was to be looking at a planarian and she was filling me in on various planarian facts, such as the fact that planaria can reproduce by "tearing themselves in half." I grimaced at her and said, "Sounds painful." One of us said, "I wonder if planaria feel pain when they reproduce." Once again, my mouth was running ahead of my brain and I said, "Well, surely God wouldn't make something have pain when it reproduced." Heh. Yes, we both looked at each other and laughed and I made some comment about how God gave us pain at procreation because of the Fall. Then Sarah said, "But the Bible says that when Adam fell, all creation groaned." Heh. It was too fun.

So, Sarah is supposed to dissect an earthworm. None of us are particularly happy about this assignment, let me tell you. I was looking for a virtual earthworm dissection online and came across all sorts of dissections, except for earthworms. I found cats, rats, sheep eyes, frogs, fetal pigs, and all sorts of everything but earthworms. I clicked on the fetal pig dissection because I have fond memories of doing that in high school (although, having reproduced myself now, I don't find it nearly as entrancing). One of the initial things you're supposed to do is "sexing your pig". My initial thought was, "Um, I'd rather not." Am I the only person who has quips pop up in their brains like that?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

My brain works like an episode of Pop Up Video from VH1...yeah we are so not relishing the dissection things, I keep telling husband dear that is his class to teach, I am not a science fan. I prefer history.