Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, how was Nature Study today?
Younger offspring: We went on a nature walk.
Dr. Free-Ride: What kind of nature did you see?
Younger offspring: We didn't see any.
Dr. Free-Ride: A nature walk without any nature?
Younger offspring: Uh huh.
Dr. Free-Ride: Isn't that just a walk?
In honor of the end of the school year, the Free-Ride offspring compiled lists of the areas of knowledge they enjoyed exploring the most this year.
Younger offspring's favorite things learned in Nature Study:
- A lots of animals and their life cycles (like frogs and butterflies).
- Lots of planets -- but they don't have life cycles. [Nature Study, sadly, did not talk about the formation of planets and stars, nor their "life cycles'. It might be a time-scale issue.]
- Continents.
- A lot about dinosaurs (but we didn't do any pictures of their life cycles.
- Rocket-ship math. [They added numbers and filled in the color of the regions on the paper according to a color-by-number key based on the sums they computed.] But that wasn't actually in Nature Study.
Elder offspring's favorite areas of study in Science this year:
- The bearded dragons.
- The silk worms.
- Mongeese ... mongooses ... whatever. [There's a joke based on this that both offspring tell very well.]
- Which germs are good for you and which germs are bad for you. (Wait, that was in Health class. Does that count as science?)
- The weather. (We kept weather recording books.)
Younger offspring: We have a book at school about weather, but we didn't study weather in Nature Study.
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: You know why you couldn't study weather?
Younger offspring: Why?
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: Because the study of weather is called meteorology, and you're a vegetarian!
Younger offspring: Nooooo!
Hahaha. The meteorology joke is a good one!
C'mon, you gotta tell the mongoose joke!
Well, I do recall someone in the family-tree, who shall remain nameless, returning from and intensive 4-week program at the NJ Governor's School for Science. When pressed as to what she learned over the four weeks, her total answer was:
o If it's green and squishy, it's biology.
o If it smells bad, it's chemistry.
o If it doesn't work, it's physics.
Makes the F-R off-spring seem positively loquacious!