Gingerbread Anatomy and Pet Store Science!

The Muons continued their experiments with Colby Jack, the little white science mouse we acquired. After two weeks without running his maze, Colby ran his maze a lot slower then he had previously. We reviewed some of the terms we learned, and then the kids constructed two unique habitats to run a new experiment designed to see whether a “feeder mouse” might have some genetic instincts to run, hide, or escape when spotting a bird of prey overhead. One habitat was designed to work like an open prairie, while the other contained several objects to hide under. We crafted a large “bird of prey” cutout, fastened it to a stick, and slowly glided it over the top of each habitat while the mouse was inside. To our surprise, little Colby was completely oblivious to the big bad bird of prey, even with added realistic sound effects. Upon discussion, we determined that the lack of instinct to run and flee was probably genetically bred out of his being a poor lowly feeder mouse who probably has a long line of pet store ancestors.

We had fun with the story, The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone.  Many of the kids were familiar with the tale as we read the book, acted out the story with puppets and then colored a gingerbread “person” of their own to take home.