Our Dissecting Classes
April 7, 2015 Adrienne Brown 0 Comments
Dissecting can be fun!
One year my family joined a co-op that was started by one of my dear friends. This co-op was interesting because it offered science classes with labs that included a dissecting session. My kids needed labs and I didn’t want to do the dissecting on my own, so I joined.
It turned out that another mom and myself were chosen to lead the dissecting section for the science class. It happened that both she and I used Abeka’s Biology at home. So we were kind of thinking along the same lines for the source of finding the basic information.
Dissecting Tools
I found many of the items in the “Home Science tools” catalog.
https://www.hometrainingtools.com
This company had everything we needed to perform the dissecting part of our lab classes.
Once we received all of our items, we were able to decide which animal we would tackle first. That year, we dissected crabs, crayfish, perch, and a piglet, this class was very intense.
Out of all the different dissecting sessions we did, I only got a chance to snap one picture of my son, as he dissected his perch. As you can see, he thoroughly enjoyed this class.
Dissecting using my cooking skills
Leading the class in the dissecting of the perch, I relied on my cooking & fishing skills a lot. We gathered the class outside, got them all seated around the table, as we discussed the fishes anatomy first.
As the other mom held the diagram up for display, I pointed out the different parts of the fish.
It was way cool because I was able to mix scientific teaching with my knowledge of cleaning and gutting a fish in preparation for cooking.
This made teaching the class so much more relaxed and the children were completely captivated with the demonstration.
She gathered all the paperwork needed, worksheets, diagrams, and any extra related curriculum. I was charged with ordering the actual specimen.
I found that when it came to this part of science, my children enjoyed it much more because they were with a group of kids. This made my task of teaching science much easier. I really enjoyed doing these classes with a large group of kids.
This class intrigued all the children because we could actually go inside our specimens. They found it fascinating that the specimen had a tiny kidney, bladder, heart, stomach, liver, and a brain.
I think it grossed them out when they discovered that one of the perch was female and there were eggs inside it.
Then I explained to them that we ate these eggs as a very expensive delicacy.
After a multitude of ughs, and gags, we were able to finish our project for the day.
This proved a very educational and rewarding, fun-filled day!
www.homeschoolmomof8.com