Educating Risa

Had a fairly quiet day today, as Daegan is snuffling through a cold, Gareth’s asthma is acting up (spring is here!) and I am simply needing a break after a very full past few days. We played, we talked, we read, we baked bread and muffins and made soup, and our big adventure of the day was a trip to the library. The boys spoke of how we were taking “a day off from homeschooling."

Daegan spent much of the day snuggled under blankets, watching some new science DVDs we received in the mail from HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute). They are a philanthropic organization that sends science materials out for free—even to Canada! You can find their DVD catalog here and their main catalog here. I ordered Daegan both Evolution DVDs.

I asked him what interesting facts or stories he remembered from the DVDs. “Well, I learned about a new creature, from a nearly complete fossil skeleton found in Jamaica, like a manatee with legs. And looking at the pelvis of a manatee, it’s triangle-shaped and has a femur socket, which shows that it evolved from animals that had back legs. Oh, and there was this experiment with fruit flies, where they got them to grow eye bits on their legs, but I don’t really remember the details. And there was this island made of cooled lava, and at first only white mice made their way to the island in people’s stuff, but then later black mice came, and even though there was only a few of them, eventually most of the mice on the island were black. That’s because they camouflaged better on the lava rocks and so had more babies. Oh, and inside a chrysalis, on the caterpillar which starts developing wings, there’s these green spots, and they become the very middle white part of the eye-spot on a butterfly’s wing.”

When he paused for breath I asked him what age these videos were for. I had seen bits and they looked like taped university lectures. “There were shots of the audience watching the prof talking—were they kids, teens or adults?”

“Adults.” Daegan replied.

“So these DVDs are aimed at late high school or university age then?”

Daegan: “I guess so—but I still find them VERY interesting. Can we get more in the series? Do they have any on entomology? Or palaeontology?”

So much for “taking a day off” from learning, eh?