Open it Up and See How it Works!

I love that my kids, the very same ones who make me save worms, will also be the first ones lining up to look at its guts.


I was morally oppossed to dissection in school but couldn't wait to actually do it, to see how the parts worked, what thry looked like and more.  So it was no surprise when, last year, Abby was thrilled that she had the chance to dissect a Dog Shark at school and she still talks about it how awesome it was.  That's cool.
 
When a wicked storm came through last week during a brutal cold snap, a large White Faced Hornet's nest blew in half and landed near my truck at work.  It was the coolest thing ever, getting to see the inside of those basket-ball sized nests.  So what'd I do?  I took it  home, of course, and waited all weekend for some quiet time to sit down with the kids and dissect it.
 
Of course you know what happened.  I cut into the first egg-cell and instead of a little bee-corpse all science-y and stuff, I was faced with the nightmare visage of a very LIVE very PISSED off bee scraping its way out of the egg casing and coming for my face.  I screamed like a girl, picked up Evie and ran to the other room.
 
Abby dumped the bee on the table, put a glass jar over it and spent the next hour cutting open the rest of the nest and loudly yelling the status of each egg cell. 
"Its alive!  And this one is feisty!!!!"
 
My kid is so cool.  Me, not so much.