science curriculum
This morning the boys were hanging around the bus stop and felt a little left out when the school kids all got on without them. Then finding a dead snake cheered them up.
a dead snake
At Harvey's suggestion, snake study made up most of our school time. We carefully observed color, texture—and of course size.
21 inches
We noticed that the snake had eyes but no nose or ears; and eyebrows but no lashes. This particular specimen was also without teeth.
alas poor yorick
To finish up, Harvey did a scientific drawing of our specimen. With a little guidance he produced three views: the whole back, a close-up of the head, and detail of the underside.
art and science
The only problem is we didn't have any good ideas of what to do with the snake when we were done (besides feed it to the chickens, which doesn't seem scientific). I wonder if there's some way we could let it decompose so we could recover the skeleton whole. Now that would be a serious learning opportunity!