A Monday...

Caity and I were holding our breath waiting to see if Tony would go to work today. We weren't sure he remembered it was Columbus Day or not - not that it matters sometimes! He has been working so amazingly hard and was putting in some long hours. But not today - he stayed home with us! It was awesome! Today was all about science with Dad - FOUR HOURS of science with Dad! Whew....

They studied birds and the adaptations in their bodies that help flight, they studied mammals and their teeth and then went for a review and test on the vertebrates we had studied. The coolest thing they did today was an activity where they recreated a bird's gizzard. Now I am from the South - where folks eat gizzards. I am not a "folk" because I have never eaten a gizzard (that I know of!) And after learning what gizzards do - I can't say that it piqued my epicurean appetite to ever try one.

Birds do not have teeth. But they eat a wide variety of things - so how do they chew it all? Well - go and get yourself a zip-loc bag. Place some small pebbles in your bag and then add some seeds, nuts, fruts, bugs, worms, mud and a dead mouse or two. Or....add some things that represent some of these items: we used popped popcorn and rice to represent the insects, raisins for the fruit, a gummy worm and oatmeal to represent the worms and mud and then a couple of slices of bread for the mouse. Nuts and seeds we could handle as they were!

See - a bird eats small pebbles and rocks and these go into the gizzard. Then the gizzard uses these rocks to grind up the food into digestible bits. So - now you can squeeze and twist your bags and see what happens. All of the food becomes smaller! Too cool how that works....

I'll close with my opinion - Gizzards are for the birds!