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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.

close-up of the snake's back, on a ruler

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.

Harvey measuring the length of the snake with a tape measure

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.

macro of a dead snake's face

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.

Harvey drawing views of the snake

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!

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