Gearing Up For Day 2!

Today was great. LOTS of energy in that lab with 14 boys and 3 girls. Fortunately, they were all happy to spend their free time with Twister, Jenga blocks, stacking cards, Guinness picture books, and dissembling and assembling the organs of the human body -- and reading or learning World Record facts pertaining to each of those.

Lab lessons today included measuring everybody's waist and then seeing how they each compared to the woman with the smallest waist (15"!) and the world's fattest twin's waist (84"!). Of course, there was lots of fun and interesting talk as to how they got that way (corsets for the first, and a messed up pituitary gland after German measles at age 4 for the second).

The kids learned a lot about the pituitary gland today -- especially because the world's tallest people were/are so tall because of an out of control gland, or a tumor on it. We did a really cool project on those tall folks, too, drawing the world's tallest man on butcher paper and hanging him up to stand next to. He also has the world's largest hands and feet, so we measured those out too.

He Pingping's not the shortest man because of his pituitary gland, but because of primordial dwarfism, and we drew him on butcher paper as well - to stand next to the tallest man.

Tomorrow is Amazing Animal Day, which will start with charades and amazing animal facts. It'll move then into watercoloring the world's largest butterfly, which has an 11" wing span and is poisonous to predators. Kids'll be able to choose whether they want to paint the largest male or female butterfly (different colors, of course) or moth.

I'm still choosing my afternoon activity, but it should be fun. Natch.

The next day gets even juicier with Bizarre Human Feats. Kids'll learn a lot of wonderful and useless information -- and you'd better believe I'm going to let them see how much work and skill it would take to be the record-holder of the world's loudest burp!