A Honduran Science Class

Reviewed my class one morning,and it occurred to me that we could have the class outside. The topic was plant tropism, and what better way than having my sixth graders wonder around outside our Honduran nature. So we went to look at sunflowers. Kids wondered what exactly made them move, so we discussed phototropism. Along the discussion, I remembered that song that Methodist missionaries taught me a long time ago: "Like a sunflower that follows every movement of the sun, so I turn towards you to follow you my Lord..," there was no need to get into that with my kids but they wondered about my sanity in my humming.

There were the "dormilonas" (mimosa pudica;sleepyheads;tickle-me-plants) waiting to be touched so that they could hide within themselves, the simple explanation is that they do that to protect themselves from foot traffic (cows, goats, humans etc.), there are bunches of them on campus and merely considered weed, I imagine that people actually think of these as special plants elsewhere. The kids were running everywhere touching them as though they had never seen them before, they had, but not in a science class context.

On another day we discussed rocks. I gave them an assignment, to go outside and look for sedimentary rocks and other types if they could find any. I warned them to leave big rocks alone, I didn't want them bitten by snakes or dangerous insects. They were all excited to be outside once again, but this time hunting for rocks. In the end I had a bunch of rocks brought to me with different explanations as to what they were. Amazingly someone found a magnetic rock with bits of shiny gold look-alike pieces (fool's gold we are guessing).

Next up - clouds. We went cloud spotting. We found them around. Cirrus, stratus and cumulus. We also found dragons, sofas, a nose, a bear and someone farting in the skies.

Recently, chicharras (cicadas) began singing their mating songs, and how convenient that we are currently discussing animal behavior and mating behavior specifically. This time there was no need to go outside. I asked them to be silent for a minute and to just listen. The sound had been there all this while, its just that we were not attuned to it. It washed over us increasing in sound gradually. A jarring noise that at first seemed a cacophony became a uniform intoxicating sound, a symphony of maracas. I think that I'm becoming addicted to the sound of these insects. I respect these creatures that spend 17 years underground developing and growing to come out this once and sing for a few weeks to attract a mate.