TINDERBOX

Today was the Science day of our Madeline study. The suggested science lessons in the Five in a Row manual didn’t really grab me, so I freelanced.

In the book, Madeline gets appendicitis and is rushed to the hospital for surgery. After we read the book through, I brought out our copy of Pop Up Facts: Human Body and we found the appendix on the digestive system page. I introduced the word “vermiform” and explained that it means “shaped like a worm.” We discussed what the appendix does: apparently, nothing; some doctors think it plays a role in the immune system, but taking it out doesn’t seem to make any difference.

“Why do we have an appendix?” Alex asked, playing right into my hands. I explained that some plant-eating animals have an appendix too, and they use theirs to help them digest parts of plants that humans can’t eat. “Like cows?” she asked. Actually, I explained, cows have four stomachs to do all the extra digestive work they need to get energy from grass. “Do you know how some dinosaurs digested their food?” Alex asked. “They swallowed rocks to grind their food up in their stomachs.” Right, and so there are several different ways for animals who eat grass to help their body use the hard-to-digest parts. A working appendix (as opposed to our own non-working appendix) is one of them.

Our appendix is probably left over from when our distant ancestors were plant-eating animals. So we read Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story, a beautifully illustrated and poetic picture book that traces human ancestry back to single-celled sea organisms. Then we continued to talk about how sometimes when animals change over time, old parts they don’t need anymore are still passed down. The appendix is one example for humans, and another is the tailbone. Alex struggled a bit with the time scale of evolution (“Did I have an ape for the great great great grandmother of my grandmother?”) but seemed to understand the general idea.

Then I asked her if she wanted to know more about what happens when a kid has an operation, like Madeline did. Yes! She totally did. So we watched a couple of hospital-produced YouTube videos designed to prepare children for surgery. (I was inspired by Sprouts Homeschooling – they use YouTube a lot, in neat ways.)

We watched one sweet and earnest one:

And one fast-paced funny one from Australia:

They both give a very good idea of what happens before and after surgery, what anesthesia is, how hospital personnel look and what they do – all fascinating information for Alex. I also told her a few non-scary details about what it was like when I had surgery as a child, and talked about some differences between hospital stays in Madeline’s era and hospital stays now. (Madeline could only have visitors for two hours a day, and she stayed in the hospital for more than ten days for her appendectomy.) Alex came out of this discussion totally convinced that she wants to have an operation and stay overnight in the hospital, so I guess those hospital prep videos are doing their job.

After dinner tonight we’re going to return to France and make crepes with raspberry jam and powdered sugar.