My daughter is taking 9th grade biology.  That means dissections!  I ordered everything last summer.  Since we are moving to Virginia, I considered the options with these preserved creatures.  My daughter is not yet at the part of the science course to do the dissections.  Technically they should be done later.  But I did not want to pack them in our car.  Nor did I want to have the movers deal with them.  Sometimes things get damaged.  What would I write on the insurance claim?  "Damaged...4 dead animals."  Or what if they got lost.  "Lost...4 dead animals." What would the insurance company think?  No, we had to do them now!  Additionally, my sister-in-law, who is a veternarian, loves to do dissections and had originally agreed to do them with the kids.  So today after our Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field Trip, we packed up the van with the dead creatures, and drove to her house.  (I explained to her they couldn't be done at my house because the appraiser could be coming through.  What in the world would he think?)

     My nephews were down for naps, so we got down to work. The plan was that she'd work with them and I'd take pictures.  Later, when my daughter actually needs to do the labs, she can do her drawings based on my digital pictures.  Also, she can use the zoom feature in the digital imaging program and look at any body parts up close for extra detail.  My SIL was impressed with this, saying that is how labs are being taught these days at colleges. 

     I was elated to have my SIL do this because I do not like to dissect animals.  Instead I got to sit back, take pictures, draw a picture of a fish for my 2 1/2 year old nephew, and cuddle with my baby nephew and give him his bottle!  I don't know when I'll get to see them again so I had to soak this up!

     My SIL was dubious that we'd get all 4 dissections done, but I was a woman on a mission.  My son really got into the dissections and would probably still be there exploring if given the choice.  However I made sure we got all 4 done before we had to leave. 

     Dissection number one was an earthworm.  I made sure not only my son, but also my daughter, got the opportunity to run their fingers up and down the earthworm to feel the setea, which it used to pull itself around.  The kids wanted me to feel for them, but nope.  I would not want to take away from their time to get the dissections done. (Besides I had done this in high school and college labs and it was my least favorite part of all the dissections I've ever done.) 

Dissection number two was the crayfish.  

Here are the gills...

And here is the rest.  They were able to figure out that it was a male.

Dissection number three was a perch.  My son was really excited to do this, because he loves fish.  It would have been great if I had my video on, because this was the fish that got away!  While my son was cutting into him, it flew out of his hands, flipped in the air and landed on the floor.   Alas there are neither videos nor pictures of this creature.  My son had a really hard time opening him up, then once we started taking a look around, nothing matched the pictures in the biology book.  We did figure out (we think) what the air bladder was and that was pretty cool.  Oh, we did have a good time inspecting the differences in the fins and looking at the gills.  Since we were  clueless about the rest of it, we simply explored the insides.  We decided this one was a dud.  My son tried to get into the brain, but it had a hard head.  I finally told him we had to move on to the frog, that should be a lot better and more productive. 

     Dissection number four was the frog.  We had no directions at all for this one.  The lab expected the kids to have enough experience under their belts to do a little on-line research to learn what they should expect to see.  Hmmmm....didn't have time for that.  So we just dug in.  My SIL and I remembered how to cut one open from our high school and college labs.  Upon first viewing, it looked like this...

Then I told them to just explore.  SIL really got into this (so did my son) and she was able to figure almost everything out.  We never would have come to the same conclusions she did.  Her explanations were extremely logical and taught us a lot about doing future dissections (future dissections?  ugh) Because this anatomy is a little more similar to a mammal, and she works with dogs and cats, she was able to draw from what she knew of dogs and cats and apply that to the frog.  For example, she figured out which organ was the heart, because it felt like a muscle.  She figured out the liver because the gall bladder was obvious.  The lungs made sense after finding two of them...deflated.  

We think this was a female because we think these are the eggs that were pulled out.  SIL and I thought they looked a little like caviar...not that we've ever eaten any.  (Please don't offer us any.  We agreed that is one delicacy we could easily pass up, especially after this experience.)

In the end, my daughter, who was dreading this opportunity, figured it wasn't so bad after all.  My son obviously had a blast because he does not have to do this for a couple of more years. I had to make sure he gave his sister equal opportunity.   My four month old nephew would not let me sit while I gave him his bottle. I had to stand so he could see everything.  He kept leaning closer and closer to the dissection.  It was not easy feeding him while he strained to watch every detail.  My 2 1/2 year old nephew did not want to touch the fish at first.  Finally he touched it and then he thought that was disgusting.  He really liked my daughter's biology book.  He had a lot of fun pointing out plants and animals.   My SIL felt like she didn't do enough, especially because she had to tend to her sons quite a bit.  Actually I think she did a wonderful job!  The kids got far more constructive direction from her than they ever could have from me.  My strengths are in other areas, but not dissections.  I am thrilled that I don't have to tote these things to Virginia.