Thoughts on dead things

In the past week I have been ever so lucky enough to be able to have 2 different kind of dead animals in my school classroom.  Oh, no, not ones that we found that happened to die while in stuck in the room or anything... two animals that died, and then brought into our class to share and look at and make art projects with.

Fun right?

It started with a dead robin found on the playground.  All the kids congregated around it, so my teacher thought it would be a good idea to put in our fridge and look at after snack.  I was disgusted by the fact that it was in the same fridge as my lunch, and I didn't know.  We ate snack and then out came ziploc bag with the bird... and then out came the bird from the ziploc bag.  The kids were encouraged to look at it and touch it.  I stayed on the other side of the room and gave the kids 2 large squirts of soap when they were done examining the bird.  I was glad when we took the bird up to the fifth grade class so they could check it out.  Only they brought it back 10 minutes later, so back in the fridge it went until we could bury it.

I don't like birds when they fly, steal your food, or are dead on my classroom table.

I also don't like geese that stand in front of my door and hiss and chase me.  But maybe I'll get into that in another post.

Dead animal #2

In Japan they have a form of art that we called fish prints.  You paint on a whole fish and then print it onto paper or fabric.  We also used starfish to make prints.  I was fine with helping out with this project until I fully understood what it meant.  We had to have 2 dead fish in our room all day.... laying out on the table... all day... Fish smell. bad. Fish feel weird. But being a good helper I helped all the kids with their prints.  I helped them press the fabric and told them all did a good job and wasn't it so cool.  I even did one of my own.  But now I have no idea what to do with it.  What do you do with a print of a fish on a piece of fabric?  I don't really even want to touch the side that the fish may have touched.

21 more days of school.

I'm excited for summer.