All About Mammals

We got word from Michaela’s teacher a couple of weeks ago that starting this week, each student would be required to make a speech on the topic of their choice. The speeches are to include a greeting, an introduction, the main body, and a conclusion, as well as some sort of visual aid. Michaela chose to do her speech on mammals, which she learned a lot about at Zoo Camp this summer.

She wrote notes on a clipboard about mammals: They have hair or fur. They have a spine or backbone. They are warm blooded. They produce milk. They do (do? What’s the right verb here?) live birth. The smallest mammal is the hog-nosed bat. The largest mammal is the blue whale, which is the size of her school’s lunch arbor (or “harbor,” as Michaela pronounces it).

Michaela is very artistic, so I suggested she make a poster for her visual aid. She had a different idea.

First, some history.

Michaela had a small brown stuffed bear that she named Ocho. That’s Spanish for eight. She got a larger bear who looked similar, but bigger, and she named him “Dieceocho,” or 18. Because he’s the same, but bigger. (Clever, right?)

Flash forward to now.

Michaela decided that for her visual aid, she was going to bring Dieciocho and Ocho… to demonstrate live birth.

I tried to dissuade her. The bears aren’t alive, I said, prompting jokes from Mike about the wisdom of sending her to school with a live, pregnant bear to actually demonstrate live birth. Wouldn’t you rather make a poster, I asked. Nope. She was determined.

Except… Michaela doesn’t know how birth works. She still thinks babies come “from their mommy’s tummy,” so when she was practicing, she said “Dieciocho has a baby in his [!] tummy. And now he’s giving live birth,” and then pulled Ocho out from Dieciocho’s back. Mike showed her that babies usually come out “more like this,” pulling the smaller bear down from the bear’s mid-section, and that was that. She was ready for her speech.

When I picked Michaela up from school, she said she felt really confident giving her speech and that it went really well. She said she demonstrated live birth and answered questions from the class afterwards– but no, there weren’t any questions about live birth.

I can’t wait to chat with her teacher before school tomorrow morning to get her take on it.