Why Kindergarteners Should Know the Word Sperm, Or, The Relationship Between Vocabulary and Concepts

My kindergarteners know the word sperm. And when we shone the light of a projector through the egg shells to look for signs of development, a process known as candling, they logically hypothesized that the egg that we affectionately call "Number 1" is lacking blood vessels and other signs of life because it did not receive a sperm.

How did it come up in the first place? Well, children wanted to know why eggs in the store did not contain chicks. It's not just because a hen doesn't sit on them, it is also because the hens that lay eggs for consumption are often isolated from roosters so that fertilization cannot occur. Yup, we eat the eggs of lonely hens. Unless you happen to crack open an egg with a spot of blood on the yolk. That would be the remnants of an embryo that died after being removed from hen or incubator. So I told the kinderfolk that although the hen makes and lays the egg, the rooster must add something in order for the egg to become a chick. The child I have renamed Precocious, ever astute and always on to something, raised her hand and announced, "I already have all the eggs I'm ever going to have and if a man gives it something when I'm big, it will make a baby." It was time to name "something." 

It's no big deal to kids to know the word "sperm," only to my colleagues who raised their eyebrows, or cheered or laughed wickedly while rubbing their hands together. It's science and it's truth and if children are asking the questions, they are developmentally ready to know the answers. How the sperm gets into the hen did not cause too much excitement (or analogy) on the children's part, and the fact that chickens mate without penetration made the explanation all the more easy on my part. They actually line up their vents (openings beneath their tails) and the sperm goes from the rooster's vent to the hen's where it eventually finds the egg.

All this because they wanted to know why eggs in the refrigerated section of City Market don't have chicks inside. 

And yeah, we could have skipped the word "sperm" and stuck with the word "something," but besides being pointless, children need vocabulary to develop concepts about the world. One word stands for more words. Lay stands for producing and depositing eggs. Hatch stands for an animal coming out of a shell. Those are some pretty wacky ideas if you think about it, as are most things young children come into contact with for the first time. The world is weird and rather than having to remember something so crazy as a chicken growing an egg inside its body and squeezing it out, when "lay" becomes part of a child's vocabulary, when they hear, read or use it, they access it's meaning in their fascinating brains. (We all do). As children come to use vocabulary to express a concept, they gain a deeper and more complex understanding of that concept. 

My students' vocabularies have expanded wildly since we began incubating eggs. Even my English language learners who have trouble remembering the words for geometric shapes are using vocabulary from the Wall of Special Chick Words:

develop

candle (verb not noun)

hatch

lay

pipping

male

female

egg tooth

blood vessel

air sac

embryo 

prediction

observation

thermometer

temperature

incubator

rotate

The new favorite game in kindergarten is to get in groups of three or four people, be handed a card with one of the above words, figure out how to act it out, and perform their word for the class. Precocious, Sparkles and the Cowboy showed their understanding of the word "develop" by crouching down, then steadily stretching their bodies taller while making muscles and chanting, "smarter, smarter, smarter." To show the words "blood vessel" Neighbor and Fidget lied down with their feet and hands touching to create an egg shape. Annika lied in between them and squiggled her arm like a blood vessel to Pear Blossom, curled up tight as the embryo. Pear Blossom quietly sipped from the blood vessel formerly known as Annika's arm. The applause was deafening.

What's Next?: Teaching them that the embryo gets nutrients from the blood vessels through the abdomen, not the mouth! 

Why You Shouldn't Try to Hatch Chicks in Congo

One needs only two things to hatch in chicks a classroom: fertilized, fresh eggs and an incubator kept at 99.5 degrees F. But even the most simple of things can be made impossible in Kinshasa. Why?

1. American incubators run on different voltage than what we have in Congo.

2. Even after you rig up transformers like you know what you're doing, you'll realize that the Congolese light bulbs don't fit into the American incubator.

3. Getting light bulbs transported from American to Congo without getting smashed is a very tall order.

4. My French cannot handle the complexities of requesting eggs that come from a hen who has been shacking up with a rooster, eggs that have only exited hen within the last week and which are not speckled with fecal matter, but if they are, sand it off please and for goodness sakes, don't wash the eggs in water!

5. Someone will have thought it a brilliant idea to pack the eggs in a metal can and careen through gargantuan potholes to deliver them to my classroom, leaving us with 8 eggs minus the two smashed ones, minus a third with a hairline crack that we are incubating anyway but will probably dispose of after two weeks lest it explodes (it happens).

6. Bumpy delivery notwithstanding, the eggshells in Congo are incredibly thin and porous. I only hope this does not mirror the bone density of the Congolese.

7. The power is frequently cut, sending the temperature of an incubator plummeting to something way colder than the underside of a hen.

8. When the generator kicks on, electricity buzzes through our outlets with more power than ever. The temperature shoots up causing an impressive array of chick deformities.

9. We are not in America so there is no friendly farm up state but not too far up who will take the chicks back upon hatching. IF they hatch that is.

Battling items 6-8 at the moment on Day #2 of Incubation 2011.

KinderArt!

Inspired by Congo Week, we learned how a tailor gets down to business... Choosing fabric, designing a pattern, cutting the fabric... Below is a close-up shot. I believe I have seen that very outfit worn on the streets of Kinshasa. True haute couture. 

Finger painting that doesn't get your hands messy. Squirt or spoon paint onto paper, lay a piece of plastic wrap on top and bang, mush and gush. Don't mind my messy desk in the corner- it deters the evil eye as one of my former Indian colleagues once told me.

Collage fabric tree inspired by the book Mama Miti by Donna Jo Napoli. We read it while studying Wangari Maathai. A photo of this tree and a letter inviting Ms. Maathai to picnic under the mangosteen tree we planted and closing with, "We hope you like your Nobel Prize" were DHL'd to Kenya. 

Where art and math collide. A painting series by the little Mondrians.

Our own Charlotte's Web(s)

Marble painting: classic.

Beaded Sand Castles: Why not?

Body Models from left to right (inner most to out) we have organs (yes that's a rectum there), skeleton, muscles and skin/funky outfit. A few months later we added a nondenominational soul we named Friendly Friend, who is hung to the left of the organ model (whatever that means).

Almost Smart Enough to Know How to Lie Properly

One child to another: Fuck you.

Me: WHAT did you say?!

Child: Fuck two. I said, 'Fuck two.'

French Screw Ups, Part I

The usefulness of my French is situational. I am able to ask a tailor to make a cap-sleeved wraparound dress with pockets and a snap closure, but I routinely fail at planning my veggie patch with the campus gardener. I care a lot more about vegetables than fashion, but some words just stick better in my mind. For example, I was at an utter loss while explaining to Rattinger's caretaker that he needed a swimsuit every Monday for P.E. The conversation went something like...

Me: Rattinger is needs something.

Confused Caretaker (CC): ?

Me: Something...for....for...for...snowing!

CC: Snowing?!

Me: Dammnit! Not snowing! A thing for .... school.... See every Monday we put the children under water.

CC: Water?

Me: Yes, of course. Under a lot of water. We put them in a box. A box of water.

CC: To clean them?

Me: No, for the exercises them.

CC: Swimming?

Me: Yes, of course! He needs to bring a thing a thing like clothes for swimming! And a....thing like a napkin to...remove the water...after.

So the following Monday, Rattinger arrives with a towel and an extra pair of underwear, camouflage patterned, with "Little Guy" written across the front.

Zanzibar

The beach...

 This appears to be a really interesting fort, but it is in fact now a craft center where 20 women will try to splatter you with henna and a stoned lady keeps sticking scarves in your face

 Focus on the small blob at the top of the trunk- the heroic coconut retriever.

I miss the juice.

 Kite surfing. Crazy.

 We thought we were going to the reef to snorkel. Nope we were going to the reef to hike. Bring your walking sticks, girls.

Low tide does strange things.

 

 And people do strange things in low tide...

 Oh yeah, the water is greeeeen

Here and There, in Malawi

I spent the last week of 2010 traveling slowly up the northern shores of Lake Malawi and overland into Tanzania. On the long bus ride along the length of Malawi, I stepped off at a road block looking for a private spot in the bush to relieve myself. When the driver saw my surveying, he suggested asking the police to use their toilet. At first I thought that was a preposterous idea, until I remembered that Malawi is not Congo and the police are far less corrupt and can even be helpful. Right, I thought, Malawi is a normal country, and I tried not to pause and consider too much how somewhere along the way a place like Malawi became normal to a white girl from Jersey.

I stopped at Mwaya Beach where I used to volunteer as a nursery teacher to bring Christmas gifts to my teaching colleagues and check in on all of the staff. Thankfully everyone is still alive since my last visit. I found this remarkable because several people had died between the end of my volunteering and my last visit there, and because many if not most of them are HIV positive. When I got to the beach, I found myself totally alone in the bush, as it was in the evening and everyone had gone home. I had sent an email I was coming, but internet is less useful in these parts than the bush telegraph and I ended up spending a couple of pitch black hours in the sand before obtaining shelter.

I spent Christmas on Makuzi Beach, tranquil and secluded and fancy in a sandy sort of way. Christmas morning gingerbread cookies, miniature pies and coffee were delivered to my door and I spent Christmas dinner under the wings of three highly educated Malawian women and the henpecked British husband of one. We chatted about books, geography and public transportation. A German family passed around their traditional Christmas cake after dinner and the Italians at the table thanked them by singing Silent Night in German. The Malawians joined in in Chechewa and the South Africans in English. I kept my mouth shut since I only know the first 2 lines and I'm not much of a carroller. But despite being an irrelegious Jew, dozens of voices singing a Christmas song in 3 languages gave me the chills. Full of Christmas cake squeezed beside a huge dinner, we all staggered down to the beach were the Germans gave us our second treat of the evening: fireworks set off along the lake, exploding brilliantly against the stars.

After a quick, harassed stay in Nkhata Bay, I said goodbye to Lake Malawi, added bilharzia screening to my To-Do list and headed up to my favorite spot. WAY up. After a 10k hike uphill in midday Malawian heat with a 30 lb backpack, I was happy to rest my legs at Mushroom Farm. Not usually much of a planner, I made sure to request the second story of the brick and thatch hut weeks in advance. It is set on the edge of a cliff with only 3 walls so you can lie in bed watching the sunrise and the sunset, the night sky thick with stars or cut up by lightening.

 View from my bed

From there I began the 4 day journey over land and sea to Zanziabar. I stopped in a couple of towns along the way to spend the night, all unremarkable save for occasional oddities like the restaurant in Mbeya where the cook, perhaps hearing of muzugues hesitance to eat uncooked, unpeeled vegetables, served me a microwaved salad. But for the most part, it was long days spent in hot, over-crowded buses held together by duct tape.

I was so disoriented from heat and sun and sweaty car insides that when I finally reached Dar es Saalam, I wondered at the peculiarity of the bus depot where I was going to catch a quick ride to my lodgings for the night. It was the weirdest bus depot I had ever seen. There were no buses and I couldn't figure out how they got in or out. It wasn't until the ferry pulled up that the lightbulb went off. I spent the night on the beach to detox from car exhaust before boarding the island bound boat. I had heard vomitious horror stories about the ferry to Zanzibar. I shocked myself by not being ill, and I was able to ignore the retching around me by keeping my eyes straight ahead on the Jackie Chan movies.

Zanzibar was great, but the best part was arriving.