Days Like This Part II

Everything falls into place
Like the flick of a switch
Well my momma told me
There'll be days like this

Mariel, Cornflower and I are currently reading about mollusks in the science book. Today, we read about mussels, clams, oysters, scallops, and different types of gastropods. This sounds like it might be a little boring-- what do mollusks do besides sit there, right? But the text was pretty inspiring, and by the end of our science lesson, the girls had on every pearl (faux and otherwise) in the house, had given opinions as to where each strand had come from, watched a video of a man removing a pearl from an oyster (as well as another video of a man inserting a tiny bead into an oyster to make a cultured pearl), decided the color of the pearl can be predicted by the color of the inside of the shell, dug out numerous shells we keep sitting around as conversation pieces, and pulled out Triss' conch shell horn she got in the Caribbean awhile back. We figured out where the conch's antennae (with eyeballs at the ends) would have peeked out of the shell, and compared the shell to a whelk shell, which is kind of similar. Of course, we all had to try and see if we could blow the horn properly and use our hand positions to make the pitch change.

(I also found a couple of short videos of a scallop swimming. That doesn't sound like it would be amusing, but you should watch them sometime.)

This was a spontaneous eruption of interest. My plan for the lesson had been to read aloud and have the girls narrate. They did narrate, but one thing led to another, as sometimes happens, and when it does, I just love it. They ended by arranging everything on a tray in the middle of the dining table and sketching pictures. Of course, we went way over scheduled time, but it was worth it.