Tuesdays Are Marginally Better Than Mondays

Congrats! to fellow Champion of the Blogosphere, Angela, for winning Baby Bunsen Burners' first contest by finding a video of the Supernanny episode I specified in the previous post. Links to the video are posted in the comments section. From what I've watched of the episode, the children have gotten better, if only slightly. I get little pangs of anxiety watching that video, because that's exactly what my days are like.

Today we covered cells. Relying on my limited knowledge of microbio from Bio Honors (again, Liem FTW), I explained the difference between animal cells and plant cells, as well as salient features of each. The main experiment was looking at various cells under the microscope, and having the kids sketching what they see.

Here are some of the samples we looked at: onion skin (dyed with green food coloring. Bah, who needs expensive iodine?), some pollen, a feather, the petal from this small yellow flower, a leaf, Plumeria flower petal, and my cheek cells.

Overall the lesson went rather well. The images turned out great, and the kids were fascinated by the samples. I remember doing a similar exercise in 7th grade (Mrs. Nishimoto. She had a chinchilla that didn't like boys), and some of those images are firmly implanted in my memory. Hopefully some of these slides will stick with the kids as they progress through their respective educations.

In other news, here's today's shirt-pocket:

The inventory stands at: two mechanical pencils, a ball point pen, a pack of microscope slides, a pack of microscope slide covers, a Plumeria flower, a kukui nut, a list of people who don't get recess that day, a note saying one of my students went to the healthroom for a sore stomache, and my ID.

So here's the thing about that shirt. I bought that shirt sometime in the latter end of elementary school. Elementary school?! Surely you must be kidding, Mr. Sakimoto. Ah, but here's the thing about me. I have apparently always been a huge and adorable, but mainly huge, child. After a weekend of cleaning, at the intersection of Memory Lane and Reminiscing Road I came across picture albums from my misguided youth. Such gems as these:

Yes, that is me, the kid who's two heads taller and twice as wide as everybody else. I'm pretty sure we were all the same age. So after reviewing this evidence, I don't find it particularly surprising that a shirt from elementary school still fits.

Tomorrow, we will attempt to look at fingerprints and examine salient features. My single hope is that we don't make a mess. But that's pretty ambitious. So I hope for a day free of pee and poo accidents.