Random school stuff

M1 is a Tiger Scout this year. He loves it most of the time, though sometimes I wish we were in a bigger troop. And/or not in charge. Can you go straight into Boy Scouts if you've never been a Cub? Part of me wants to pull him out next year and find something else he'll enjoy like maybe a cooking class. He'd love that.

But I sound like a bitter old hag. I love my Scouts. They truly rock. My den consists of M1 and his two best friends - twins - who are hilarious. None of them go to the school where they are Scout members. It's M2's school, though, where they all went last year, so it's familiar turf to them.

We completed one of our last requirements a couple of weeks ago. The goal was to discuss nutrition, then study the food pyramid and make one. I whipped a basic pyramid out of a piece of paper as the boys were on their way over, grabbed the magazines, and let them go to town.

OK, so Reader's Digest is what we had, but hey, they have lots of food ads in there! The boys were really funny about it, too. They'd cut out a picture of crackers AND cheese and debate which section to put it in, or they'd cut out a picture of a tomato and feel the need to ask me whether that was a vegetable or a fruit (for the record, I went with vegetable because I'm not getting technical at the age of 7).

Silly boys.

A couple days later, M1 had another assignment involving finding the right category. We've been studying different branches of the animal kingdom in science, and the time came for review.

From left, we have worms, cnidaria, echinoderms, arthropods, mollusks, and vertebrates. It took him a while, as you can see here, but he did get it without me having to break out the cheat sheet. I just had to ask him to remember how many body parts an echinoderm had.

Anyone know?

Anyone?

Bueller?... Bueller?

Sorry... got distracted. The answer is five.

This is one of the things *I* have learned while teaching him. Like the definitions of the words autotrophic and heterotrophic. And how fungus eat. And that's just science.

He's a smart cookie.

Mmmm... cookie...

Gotta love learning. And Scouts. And cookies.