Dissection Party!

Nothing says a good time like formaldehyde, dead frogs and young children wielding scalpels. We ordered some double-injected frogs and invited over Larkin's new friend (Christopher, who introduced himself as a scientist when they met at the library park) and Hunter. Everyone was very excited as we set up.

Okay, honestly, regardless of how the picture looks, they were very excited. Larkin and Christopher were at a perfect age for this. They wanted to identify all the organs (with the help of the handy-dandy dissection guide) and see all the different layers of skin, fat, muscle and bone. They cut open stomachs to look for bugs and were pretty thrilled when Larkin's frog turned out to be quite full of what must have been eggs. They spent a very focused hour exploring their frogs.

Finn and Hunter spent about half an hour with their shared frog, and it was a bit more of a slice and dice operation.

They enjoyed some organ identification, too, but were mostly studying how to take a frog apart. This is what happens when a frog spends half an hour with two three year olds with scalpels:

Was that too much information?

Anyway, we had a lot of fun and I would just like anyone who is considering a similar experiment to know that it smells a whole lot better when you don't have 35 kids in one enclosed room working on dissections.