Our grammar school students have been learning about the animal kingdom lately, and I thought you’d like to meet a special guest who visited the third graders last week: Sir Pigglesworth, or Piggles for short.
One of our Founders moms brought in her family’s mini pig to help our third graders learn the characteristics of a mammal. The students were fascinated.
After reminding themselves of the characteristics of a mammal (warm blooded, give birth to live young, nourish those young with milk, and usually have hair), the students got to greet and feed the pig themselves.
He loved it, and so did they.
Meanwhile, fifth grade has been studying owls, and they got to visit the upper school science lab for a dissection.
By taking apart an owl pellet (a mixture of hair, feathers, and bones that owls spit up after each meal) students got to see just how much these flying predators can eat in one night. With careful dissection, students removed the intact bones of rodents, shrews, moles, and birds and put the partial skeletons together again.
The best part was finding the skulls. Do you see the tiny skull in the picture below? The students thought it probably came from a shrew.
Did you know that Dr. Lutz, our new 5th grade math and science teacher, has a doctorate in veterinary medicine? This is just the beginning of a rich education in the sciences for our grammar schoolers.