Mary Buster wrote to say that her 6th grade science
classes mummified mice each year. She buys
dead
"feeder mice"
She continues:
"We do a
complete thematic unit on Egypt, so the students are doing Egyptian
projects in all of their classes. We look at anatomy pictures of
humans and rats while we dissect the mice so it becomes an anatomy
lesson, too.
"The students remove organs, wash the body and dry it.
We then place the mice in shoe boxes of salt and baking soda for
forty days. I put the shoe boxes in a heavy plastic garbage bag and
then put it in a cupboard to cut down on any smells. When the time
is up, the students wrap their "pharaohs" with strips from
an old pillow case (anything soft). We make canopic jars and
actually put organs in them with some fresh baking soda and salt
(this is after they are dried). The students wear medical gloves and
wash their hands well when the project is finished. We do one mouse
to about every four students."
One year, her students used
rats rather than mice. She notes: "I found
the rats to be much more acceptable than the mice for two reasons.
First, the organs are so
much more visible and easier to identify. Second, mice intestines
can have a bad odor (although I don't always notice) and
the rats had virtually no odor at all. Some of my students wanted to
see if they could take out the brain this year. We found that we
could only reach the brain if we entered the skull from the back of
the neck. They found it difficult to remove the brain in one piece,
and it bothered some of the students to see
it 'mushed.'
Actually, I'm not sure if it was the sight of the brain or the
cracking sound that occurred as they broke through the skull.
Anyway, I did have a few students sitting at the side of the room
over this part of the activity, something I never had to deal with before, but every group of
students is different! Many of them handled the whole situation very
well. You can almost visualize the doctors and nurses of the
future!"
Thank you,
Mary!
