After getting home, I went through my nine-year-old’s school backpack and found last week’s schedule. The theme for the week was “health and our bodies”, and Monday morning they learnt about bacteria and viruses (do you really have to write virii? Sounds so weird). Monday afternoon it says MAKE bacteria and viruses. Wow, I thought. Fourth grade’s really gotten more interesting!

Turns out they made paper models of bacteria and viruses. I love the occassional verfremdungseffekt of school schedules.

This week they’re going up a mountain on Thursday (please bring sausages and a log of wood for the fire if you have firewood. Knives for carving sausage-cooking sticks will be provided) and sending email to friends on Friday (please bring the email address of someone you’d like to email). Having a fourth-grader really is pretty cool, even if they’re not doing practical micro-biology yet.

6 thoughts on “making bacteria

  1. Clancy

    Oh, yeah, I think I was in fourth grade, maybe third, when we grew cultures out of swabbongs from our mouths.

  2. Clancy

    swabbings, that is!

  3. Scott

    Don’t they do that every time they wipe their noses on their shirts?

  4. Simon

    My fourth grader makes bacteria in her lunchbox every weekend.

  5. david

    they might get a kick out of these:

    http://www.giantmicrobes.com/

  6. Jill

    LOL 🙂

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