Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Spur of the Moment Research Project

One of the things I love about my upbringing was the insistent curiosity about the world that was part of our family culture. Whenever a topic of conversation came up that begged some historic, linguistic, or scientific question my mother was very quick to say, "Well! Let's look it up!" as she lugged out a volume of our very accessible encyclopedia set. We learned more interesting things that way.

Today I had the fun privilege of carrying on that tradition. When I went to rouse her this morning I found M licking her chin and told her that her saliva needed to stay in her mouth. When she asked "Why? What does it do in there?" I realized that I probably didn't know the full answer to that question, and that it was a great opportunity for both of us to learn about all of the uses God has for our spit.

After breakfast we headed off to an encyclopedia and looked up the word "saliva." We found that it performs 4 main functions and decided to make a chart about it- complete with pictures so that M could share with her Daddy later on when he got home. I let M pick out the pictures and glue them on. (I love that she chose the cat for the picture of the tongue- also you'll notice that M thought the teeth needed some sort of decoration (?))

4 comments:

Sandi said...

I used to love taking out an encyclopedia book at random and reading about different things when I was little. Nowadays encyclopedias are extinct, replaced by the internet. I think we lost something.

Sue said...

Oh, M found the cat tongue! How fun, Great reinforcement of her learning to make a chart and have her explain it to Daddy.

Sue said...

Oh, M found the cat tongue! How fun, Great reinforcement of her learning to make a chart and have her explain it to Daddy.

MaryAnne @ mama smiles said...

 I grew up the same way! 

I love M's extra decorations =)

Thanks for linking up to Learning Laboratory at Mama Smiles!