A Lesson in Micrology

Our little lab...

We had Kenzie visiting us for most of the day yesterday which was a nice surprise for Gee and me.  We started off with some tasty French Toast with bacon and sausage.  Then Kenzie played with her dolls with Gee for a little while.  As they played, I set up an area on my desk for a hands-on lesson in micrology.  

I have always felt that this stuff would interest Kenzie so even I was a bit excited to have a short session with her to see how she would react.  If it didn't interest her, we'd just move on to something else. If it did interest her, then she could get excited about something new!

We talked about what a microscope does... she learned that we can study the cells that make up each thing we view... she learned that healthy cells, generally speaking, are very similar... then we viewed all sorts of prepared slides to compare the cells. While Kenzie was viewing the slides through the binocular lenses on the microscope, I looked on by viewing each slide on my desktop computer monitor. 

As we progressed from slide to slide, I would explain a little more about how and why to adjust one part of the microscope then another part of the microscope on the next slide. Before long, she was carefully adjusting the correct knobs on her own.  

Kenzie and I viewed moss, basswood, pollen, and tomato before moving into biological specimens including insects, animals and humans.  Each slide elicited "wow's" and "GEE... you HAVE to see THIS!!!" 

Kenzie was clearly interested, engaged and excited. I had always suspected she would respond this way to this subject so I wanted to present this lesson to her while she was here alone without distractions. It held her attention much longer than I anticipated a six year old to stay focused. She actually wanted to come back to it later in the afternoon.  

Motor Neurons

As we moved into biological specimens, I knew I needed to find a way to more accurately explain what we were observing since the biological specimens don't look anything like what she expects. The first slide I grabbed was of a group of motor neurons. I had Kenzie hold out her hand, palm up... I quickly but rather lightly slapped her hand... as expected, she pulled it away quickly and rolled backward on our bed!  As she giggled uncontrollably on the bed, I asked her why she responded that way but she couldn't talk through her giggles. 

I then explained that we have nerves throughout our bodies and, simplifying things, I explained that there are motor neurons that talk to our brains.  I slapped her hand and she quickly pulled it away... I continued to explain that it was her motor neurons telling her brain to pull that hand away as quickly as possible because she felt a little bit of a sting. Again, as she looked at the slide, she said, "WOW..." and then we talked about the shapes of the objects in her view and what they do.  

Below are some images of some of the things Kenzie viewed yesterday.  This first one is a tomato section...  again, clearly defined cells...

This next image shows part of the mouth of a honey bee...  

The next image, below, shows the leg of a honey bee.  Here we see a joint in the leg...

Below, is part of a grasshopper... 

This next one is the head of an ant.  We were able to view the entire body of the ant but this photo only shows the head... 

This one, below, is actually one of the first ones we viewed.  I like this one for a first lesson because there is so much to see and the cells are clearly defined. Even the color is interesting. This is a cross-section of the stem of basswood. We'll probably revisit this one another time because there is so much to see and talk about in this single view...

Here we have a small strip of snake skin. This was interesting to Kenzie even at this magnification simply because it was of a snake but there is more to see at higher magnifications in this one...

Squamous cells of our skin...  nucleus clearly visible in each cell.... 

Stratified Squamous Epithelium... a cross-section of human skin... this one would be better to view with more contrast and at higher magnifications. This low power view was good enough for a first lesson though...

The lessons on this day all stayed at relatively low power in the 40x to 400x range.  I decided to stay on low power this time around.  Sometime down the road, we'll move into far higher magnifications.

In future sessions, in addition to showing her more prepared slides, I'd like to prepare our own slides, run little experiments and then we'll fill out a lab report about it.  As we look at more and more slides and talk about each of them, the more she learns. For now, this is definitely holding her attention and she is learning a lot.  

Kenzie really enjoyed herself and Gee and Papa enjoyed spending the day with her!