a peek inside the fishbowl

Dani and I met downtown for lunch yesterday. Instead of sitting around on a patio somewhere we decided to go on a photo hunt.

It was hot and sticky and bright – not the best kind of day for picture-taking – but a few summery photo-worthy moments managed to find me:

I would have taken more, but Dani and I blabbed the whole time we wandered. She was totally distracting!! ;)

These last two were taken at Remic Rapids en route home.

Back in April Sarah got a real junior-scientist model microscope for her birthday, along with a small wooden case of prepared slides, a pack of blanks, and some thin squares of glass used to keep specimens flat and in place.

We asked Emma to collect some pond water during a recent field trip so we could have a closer look at it with the microscope. My kids are old enough to know they shouldn’t drink pond water, but I tell ya, this was the ultimate lesson in Water That Looks Fine But Really Isn’t. There were bits of dead bugs, leaves, some kind of single celled protozoa (or amoebae?), and even a few LIVE THINGS hovering around in there. Wow.

In the wintertime I might have to do this again, but with snow.

There are a lot of cool things kids can observe under a microscope. We’ve looked at:

• salt (did you know there’s difference between table salt and sea salt?)
• pepper
• sugar
• cinnamon (Sarah declared it to look like mould)
• grass and leaves
• bug parts (save the next dead fly you find on the window ledge!)
• hair (including the end of a piece of freshly-plucked hair)
• feathers
• sand
• skin and blood (those were the slides – no blood was extracted from our children I swear.)

I remember reading somewhere about scraping some dental plaque onto a slide to look at under a microscope. It sounds disgusting, but it might result in more focused teeth-brushing, don’t you think? I might try that tonight.

ETA: please take my advice and DO NOT do a Google image search for dental plaque. *shiver*

We spent Father’s Day at Mark’s parents house. The menfolk watched the golf. The girls swam. BB the Budgie came with us in his new travel cage. I read the paper and snapped photos.

Emma is shying away from having her photo taken. You’ll probably be seeing less of her. Sarah on the other hand, is still a willing participant.

Tonight is my last photo class. I have been obsessing over light lately. That’s a good thing, I think.