We are reading Michael Faraday's Six Lectures for the chemistry component of a Year 9 science class. As you can surmise from the title of the book, there is a lot of candle burning going on.
The experiments involve close observation of the flame and usually involves its going out in different situations using up many matches in the process of relighting the candle often. One student casually wondered how matches work so I assigned that question as homework.
When we reconvened the following week, the students' narrations then led to wondering if all matches were the same? So we decided to find out and set up an experiment using different kinds of matches.
Surprisingly, I had 8 different types of matches on hand: ones with turquoise match heads, black, white or pink match heads, red with white tips of various sizes and matches with cardboard sticks from souvenir matchbooks. We used the same igniter for each strike to keep that consistent.
The students decided what they could observe that might distinguish matches from each other: What does it smell like when it first burns? or when it is first put out? What colour is the flame and the smoke? How big is the flame?
One thing usually leads to another and investigations usually lead to more questions. They wondered if the different colours were just a dye on top of the usually red phosphorus match head or its true colour. They first put it under a microscope to examine the match head and then started scraping off layers of the colour to see how it was constructed.
Our last Charlotte Mason gathering at l'HaRMaS saw
each guest gifted with their own praying mantis nest in a jar to bring
home. Our instructions were brief and number two warns us to check the
ootheca daily from mid-May to June... if you live north of the border.
Praying Mantis egg sack, the ootheca.
Leslie Laurio, our dear Friend of l'HaRMaS and Ambleside Online Advisory
member, gives us a heads up on the migration of warm weather as it arrives in
Tennessee: "I've kept my jar outside on the back porch all winter and I've
been checking them every day. Miranda looked at the jar after church, and it
was swarming with little baby mantises! I let them loose in various locations
all over my backyard so they will hopefully spread out and not eat each other.
I have the pod, and it has little dry egg casings hanging from it. It looks
like each mantis had an individual little case that he broke out of. I wish I
could have seen them coming out."
I put a call in to Sarah, our ootheca collector, and
asked for further advice: Keep the jar in the garage until it really warms up
outside, leave them in a place where the jar will not fill up with rain water,
and try to keep them two feet off the ground so the ants don’t get an easy
meal.
Here’s a great idea from Laurie: “I'm at my
community garden plot digging beds...hurrying home to check mine. They went
from one of the worst winters on record on my balcony under a flower pot to the
back of a u haul truck to my garage. Maybe it's time to share them at the
community garden?”
It's still there in the shed.
Some of us, like Melanie, need the reminder to look
at our safely stored jar as it is easy to be distracted with spring bringing
more than insects: “Oh! I almost forgot mine! I have been watching
a little spider egg sac on a boxwood shrub a few houses down on my street
almost every day but nothing has hatched yet.”
I am going to attempt to make it a
more prolonged nature study. That cast off aquarium I picked up from the
neighbors last year will make a great viewing gallery for my ootheca and will
be sure to amuse the nine year old boys in my science club. I just read that
you could hang raw hamburger on a string instead of also growing aphids for
their food as starving mantises will eat each other not recognizing they are
kin.
Swarming is the operative word; from
that little Styrofoam-like nest, the size of a walnut, comes around 200 little
praying mantises.They will not hurt you
and will not fly out at you as they need a few molts before they will get their
wings like the adults.
The Living Page by Laurie Bestvater calls it keeping: take out your
Nature Notebook, describe the nest, the hatching and all you see, draw or note what
the nest looks like after the swarm has left, take a good look at the baby
mantises, use your magnifying glass, make a notation in your Book of Firsts
when they do hatch, do something in order to keep this incredible experience as
part of what you do know.
"Only a genius can write a scientific book that throbs with life and is still scientific. Read Fabre's descriptions of insect life, those fascinating stories from which one has to tear one's self away, and compare the description of the same insect in a text book of biology - one is a living story of living creatures, the other a lifeless account of dead, dissected things." D. Avery, Parents Review, vol. 31. no. 9 edited by Charlotte Mason
Indeed, Jean Henri Fabre, son of semi-literate peasant farmers in France, became famous throughout the world for his scientific observations of insects and spiders.
We are living some hundred years since his death and there are scientists today who are thinking his observations are outdated and unscientific. They have gone so far as to launch a three year study on the supposed myth, "perpetuated" by Fabre on the tale that the female mantis eats the male after mating. Peterson's First Guides: Insects had the nerve to state this as early as 1987 in their publications saying: "contrary to popular belief, recent research suggests that the female does not eat the male while mating."
Fabre, in his own words, writes but one sentence in his book Insects: "Indeed, she even makes a habit of devouring her mate, whom she seizes by the neck and then swallows by little mouthfuls, leaving only the wings." Why did the science community take his word for it? Why did they not question nor study the mantis for themselves to prove it true or not? I think it is because anytime anyone went to look more closely at the fly, or spider, or any other creature after reading his work they realized Fabre had described just what they were seeing. If they didn't actually see something he described they confidently took his word for it. Everyone accepted Fabre's observations as scientific truth, even Louis Pasteur visited him because Fabre "already had a reputation as an expert on insect life".
This video, by New Atlantis, is the result of years of research following mantises through their life cycle again and again. Be sure to watch through past the credits to the postscript.
At l'HaRMaS, we had a few live praying mantises for display, one of which we named Hildegard. Megan Hoyt introduced us to Hildegard, "a twelfth century polymath who wrote books, music, created art, and was a Benedictine abbess and mystic". The beginning of this documentary reminded me of an "praying" abbess...
Fabre was a scientist. He spent hours each day, most days each week for months and years. He recorded his observations in minute detail and shared his passion in marvelously descriptive and fascinating books. Fabre was right and what he recorded was true.
I did a constellation chart with my daughter when she was about nine years old. It turned out to be quite beautiful. When she was a teen we attended a Royal Astronomical Society meeting and set up a private tour of the local observatory to explain further what astronomy was all about. That inch wide but deep work we did instilled a fascination for the subject that has now lasted ten years. She is even taking astronomy as an elective course in university.
I have a few young students this year and thought it would be nice to revisit this subject. We read the same book; it's not fabulous but for an introduction it works. What is great about it is that the constellations are presented in an order that makes it easy to jump from one star group to another. I have my students carefully copy out each constellation as it relates to one they already know. I have them do it in their nature notebooks going back to the same page so as to get as many of the constellations together within one picture.
My eight year old student insisted that each constellation had it's own box, she is at a stage where even her copy work has boxes around each entry. I was concerned that she wouldn't retain the relationships between all the star groupings.
Once they narrated what they knew of the position of the constellation they were allowed to pin it onto their star chart:
We had been adding one constellation a week since September. We then had a six week break over the Christmas holidays and I thought I would find out what they still knew about the constellations when we met again in January. I asked them to draw their star chart from memory with their proper names.
I was amazed. They both were able to recall each constellation and place them fairly close to their correct positions. I, too, did this exercise. I do have them all in my nature notebook but do not have a star chart of my own. I was able to recall that there were eight constellation but could only draw in five and name four.
Charlotte Mason said that all subjects should be "illustrated and illuminated by books of literary value."
A few years ago I read such a book by science journalist Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It was fascinating, tragic and personal. As with any decent science book it made me think. I acquired a deeper knowledge of the history of genetic research and was swept into the realm of bioethics. When my son went to work in the lab at the Women's Research Hospital at Harvard I was able to have a surprisingly intelligent discussion with him about HeLa cells, their history and their place in science research today.
Mason tells us that "we can only cover a mere inch of the field of science, it is true; but the attitude of mind we get in our own little bit of work helps us to the understanding of what is being done elsewhere." This one living science book gave me a deeper understanding on one subject but opened my mind to other closely related topics
This week, I read the news headline with great interest: The National Institute of Health Brokers HeLa Genome Deal. The book had made such an impression on me that I could still recall the people involved and empathized with their motivation and celebrate their accomplishment.
Ms. Skloot, the author of the book, was interviewed afresh with her perspective on this unprecedented agreement: August 9th CBC radio podcast . It was nice to hear her out loud voice as I felt I 'knew' her as I read her book.
A Mason education is a life. I read with my children for years and I continue to read for myself. A book like The Immortal Life Henrietta Lacks adds experience and knowledge to my life and I care to know more.
"The question is not how much does the youth know when he is finished with his education - but how much does he care? and about how any orders of things does he care?" Charlotte Mason
Yup, bought a book because of how it looked; the cover is textured in a lovely shade of weathered cream, the title is framed by a lovely subtle filigree with details of toadstools, mosquitoes and snakes, there is a damsel fly on the front cover and the title itself brought images of nature and beauty to my mind.
I was at a book sale that was selling thousands of almost mint condition used books at prices that made you wonder if you brought enough bags and money. The profits were to go to Raise A Reader foundation and buy new books for the children....yes, me too, the question of how deprived my children were by not having all new books. And like most of us bibliophiles, instead we had hundreds of books for our children because we took the time to scour the used book sections. But I digress.
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett not only looks like a great book but is a great read! I escaped to the Amazon for a week and thoroughly enjoyed the adventure.
Marina filled her lungs with frozen air and smelled both winter and spring, dirt and leftover snow with the smallest undercurrent of something green. p. 45
or,
Marina leaned over the front of the boat and watched the lettuce compact beneath the pontoons while behind them the plants knitted themselves back together, smoothing over the path they had made without so much as a damaged leaf. We are here, Marina thought, and we were never here. p.238
and,
That was Dr. Rapp's great lesson in the Amazon, in science: Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find. p. 246
Ann Patchett herself gives us insight as to the gift of fiction:
Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying withing the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps. (New York Times, April 17, 2012)
Take a chance on a beautiful book. Sometimes the illustrations are worth whatever might be written around them. And like my grandmother always said: There are too many great books in this world to waste your time on a boring one. Have you added a new author to your list of great reads?
This past weekend we were packing up ready to leave a family reunion. I saw my parents and the rest of my family behind a truck talking to someone. When I came out of the cabin again my mother was waving me to come. I always obey my mom, so down the road I went.
The camp professes to have no dangerous wildlife. If there is a situation where a bear fails to read the no trespassing sign, the trapper on staff quickly removes the threat. The government also uses his services and recently requested him to take some pesky beavers out from a cottager's vicinity because they had the nerve to start making a dam in preparation for their young and protection from the winter.
So there they were, two dead beavers lying on the road behind the truck at the back of the camp property.
Jim was talking passionately about the animals; how they are monogamous and how they want and need just the one home. He explained how the fur used in coats is not taken from a whole animal; the grade of fur around the neck is of the highest quality then the next section below that is of a little lesser grade and the bottom section is much coarser. When you purchase a beaver article it would be made of many strips from the same part of many beavers and the quality would depend on which section of strips made your coat.
Jim sharing his passion about the wildlife in the area
Jim told us that beaver meat, pound for pound was the highest nutrition for bears bulking up for winter and that the secret to the best show dogs was that they were fed beaver meat. If hunters wish to garner the highest profit and least waste from each animal, they can sell the fur on a tanned hide, the castors and the scent glands and even the beaver tails can be tanned and used as a wallet or small satchel.
Jim was going to drop these beavers in the woods for the bears. He looked at me incredulously as I asked him if I could have the beaver tails but he obliged and hacked both off and I took them home in my suitcase. Right now they are in the fridge but will go in the freezer until a family friend comes over to help me clean and tan the tails.
Science lessons do not always happen in scheduled blocks of time. Take advantage of a passionate hunter who willingly and eagerly shares his knowledge.
(Science's) textbook usually presents a devitalized science - only a genius can write a scientific book that throbs with life and is still scientific. Read Fabre's descriptions of insect life, those fascinating stories from which one has to tear one's self away, and compare that description of the same insect in a textbook of biology - the one is a living story of living creatures, the other a lifeless account of dead, dissected things.
D. Avery, The Cultural Value of Science, Parents Review, volume 31, no. 9. edited by Charlotte Mason.
This sums up my intention for this blog. How can we learn science in a way that is throbbing with life? Jean Henri Fabre wrote living stories. Charlotte Mason, a 20th century British educator, stated that 'all thought we offer to our children shall be living thought; no mere dry summaries of facts will do; given the vitalizing idea, children will readily hang the mere facts upon the idea as upon a peg capable of sustaining all that it is needful to retain.' (2/227) Those ideas are introduced first through living books.
be-like-Fabre: books that throb with life, persons that observe keenly and learn.
