My 45 minutes of stardom

My nephew's kindergarten has a star of the week every week. A couple of months ago, my sister said she and my nephew were talking about who his special guest might be when it was his turn. He wanted his Aunt to come!! Last week, he was the star; Friday morning, I made my grand appearance.

I brought tadpoles that were all 2 months old, but some still looked like little fish, some are little froglets with tails, and some are froglets without tails. I also brought some 2-year old frogs and some adult females (an albino, per my nephew's request). My sister had told me that a lot of special guests are family dogs that visit for about 10 minutes before the kids are out of hand. We sat on the carpet and talked about the frogs for 45 minutes. My nephew's teacher asked how long I could stay because the kids' attention was so good. They also read his story while my sister and I were there. The book is pages saying "I like Jenski's Nephew because _________," and each student filled in the blank and drew a picture. Two of the little girls said they like him because he is cute. One girl drew a picture of her saying she wanted a kiss and my nephew saying "good grief!". Then the second teacher said that there were so many people who wanted to write "because he is cute" that she had to tell them to come up with something different. He is going to be that guy who everyone likes.

Anyway, my nephew also brought his microscope and slides, one of which was of a piece of tadpole that I had given him. Everyone took turns looking at the different age frogs and into the microscope. There were some good questions.

Do frogs blink? I had to think about that. Yes. Then it occurred to me that we blink to wet our eyes, and these frogs are fully aquatic so they do not need to blink as much. I told the kindergartners so, only I said they live in the water rather than they are fully aquatic. :)

Why do the small adult frogs come to the top of the water sometimes? To breath.

Why are there plants in the bucket with the small frogs? Because they like to hide under things. The adults are too big to put plants in with them, but in the frog room, they pile up on each other to hide.

When they grow, do the toes grow and then the webs grow in between? The toes and the webs grow at the same time, and if you look closely at the tadpoles growing legs, you can see little webs.

How do the adults shed their skin? (The adults were a little stressed about the car ride and had started shedding their skin.) They do it when they are scared or stressed and the skin just comes off. When they rub up against each other, that helps too.

My nephew told his classmates that he is a scientist too. One of them asked what makes him a scientist. I did not hear what he said, but his teacher explained that if you like to explore and do experiments and answer questions in a lab, then you are a scientist.

My sister had printed out pictures of my lab. My nephew pointed to the centrifuge and asked what it was. It is called a centrifuge and you put little tubes in it and it spins them really fast. I think one boy has a parent who works in a lab because he had seen one before.

When they were regrouping at one point and told to sit on a letter on the rug, one little girl said she wanted to sit next to me. Another little girl, and I could tell she's the quiet one, did not say more than two words to me, but sat so close she was leaning on me. SO CUTE.

As I left, I told my sister I w as totally going to put this on my CV. She said it was definitely an invited lecture. :)

I could totally hang out with 5 and 6 year-olds all day. The only problem would be that I would want them to learn so much more than they are ready to at that age. :) The teacher asked if I would still be in grad school when my niece is in kindergarten in two years. Although I hope I am not I would totally go back.