SCHOOL: North Forest Pines Elementary

GRADE: 3rd

PROGRAM: Skin-N-Bones

Scientist: Heather

This Thursday, I got to join some of the third graders at North Forest Pines Elementary school for a program that at least one student described as “kinda gross…but also really cool!”, Skin-n-Bones!

In any of our programs, the best part for the students is actually getting involved in some REAL science experiments, to see how things work up close. I can’t think of many programs where this is more the case than in Skin-n-Bones, where we don’t just talk about our body systems and organs and how they work, we actually see them UP CLOSE! Each student (and even some of the teachers!) got to put on gloves then pick up and examine REAL bones and organs from sheep, pigs, cows, coyotes, water buffalo and even a shark! My favorite part is always the students’ reaction to seeing the cow’s heart! Everyone was a little disappointed I didn’t have a blue whale heart to show as well. While saying it’s the size of a small car might be a little bit of an exaggeration, at about 5 feet long, 4 feet wide, 5 feet tall, and 400 pounds it certainly would have been a challenge to move around! That makes it more that 600 times the size of most human hearts! Crazy!

We also had fun exploring how our body is constantly protecting itself: our skin blocking germs from invading our nervous system, and also helping us figure out what is going on around us so we can react quickly! Then, of course, there is our skull, protecting our brain to keep everything running smoothly! I hope the human skull “puppets” we made didn’t chatter anyone’s ear off too much about how much fun we had today!

It had been quite a while since the last time I taught at North Forest Pines, but I sure had a lot of fun and was glad to be there today! Hopefully we’ll be back again soon!