We’re at the end of the school mid- semester term (my inner pedant has just looked up ‘term’ and realized it has nothing to do with ‘three’) break and the two Pawns have mostly been at the childcare centre that is separate from school but takes place there (very convenient). They get to do all sorts of activities and generally enjoy it, although Rachel (the elder Pawn) is looking forward to going back to school so that she can be with children her own age again.
The convict Australian Government gives us back about half what we spend on childcare (a strange arrangement that results in certain Centres putting up their prices to match what the government will pay. Ha): even so, today’s activity was rather expensive—a trip to a water park about three hours’ drive. And the younger pawn doesn’t take kindly to coach trips so we decided to look after them ourselves (yes, both parents work). I had a medical exam this morning (because the convicts immigration office want to make sure everyone coming into the country is healthy. This presumably is to offset the unhealthy natives) which meant that their mother had to bring them into work.
As we work in the same place this is a reasonable arrangement: sometimes I’ll work at home in the morning and we’ll exchange hostages around lunchtime and they’ll go back home with mum in the afternoon. So I got back to work, they got in, and started amusing themselves on the internets while their parents earned a living wage.
I had to run a column again, for which I needed 1.7 ml tubes with the lids cut off. So I took a pile of tubes into the Pawns, and asked who’d like to do something for me.
Rachel stepped up to the plate, and cut off all the lids for me, and loaded them into the rack for the fraction collector. Then they both came with me and I explained what the column was going to do for me.
Which was cool, and they both seemed interested—and Rachel was happy to be paid in left-over eppendorf tubes.
Afterwards, certain members of the lab accused me of child slavery. I pointed out that no one seemed to be upset by the exchange. They then claimed I was giving my children the wrong idea of science, and perhaps putting them off a scientific career.
I said, jolly good show. They can become “sports stars”:http://network.nature.com/people/UE19877E8/blog/2008/09/29/in-which-science-becomes-a-sport-–-hypothetically-speaking and pay back what they owe us.
Does your lab refill tip boxes by hand. ‘Cause I found that random guests to the lab always really enjoy putting yellow tips in boxes…
My boss paid his daughter $1/box to refill tip boxes… Which I thought was brilliant.
I’m not sure the term child slavery works when its your kids and they work with something you need to finish work (as they need to have food on their table). Then again, if I agree can I get some refunds from those “washing the dishes” I did when I was a kid back home? Or the times my mother tested her math book problems on a poor young child 😉
I think anything in lab when you do that with children/younger people is good and helps peek their interest. After three days of putting tips in a pipette box however, you need to show them a good exciting experiment – maybe with some liquid nitrogen or GFP … or just some explosions
Kids love vortex mixers, I’ve found.
In many labs in America, kids simply aren’t allowed. I think that’s a real shame.
Oh, kids also love pipetting. A coworker’s kid once spent hours pipetting water from one beaker into another with a 1ml pipette. Pipetting power that probably could have been used elsewhere, but there was something to do with “safety” and “chemicals”. Pshaw =P
Another coworker’s kid told his mom that the cells she showed him under the microscope were “green” (They were HEK293T cells). She worried that he might be colour blind, but on further investigation half of our lab also consistently sees a green or blue colour in these cells (I see about three blueish dots) and the other half agreed with her that the cells look grey. That was pretty interesting, actually: the colour was just on the border of being detected at that magnification, and not everyone saw it. But because we all assume that we see the same things, and nobody mentioned it, it took a 6-year-old to actually express that he saw a colour there.
My PI forbids children, which is a shame. I have a pseudo-niece who would love it I think…
But because we all assume that we see the same things, and nobody mentioned it, it took a 6-year-old to actually express that he saw a colour there.
Reminds me of ‘The Emperors New Clothes’ by Hans Christian Andersen, but with a different twist!
Who knows what other stuff children might come up with/point us to if we took the time to explain our projects (of all kinds) and listen to them?
There are of course a bunch of sites devoted to easy science experiments with kids. I love the balloon rocket on this one to demonstrate air pressure – might have to try that out this weekend.
But using household items can’t compete with the ‘real thing’. I still remember helping my mother at work as a kid on a few occasions – she’s a nurse, and I was allowed to sort bandages, plastic syringes, and the like. It was the greatest thing ever.
It’s great, isn’t it, when children grow out of the mewling/puking stage and can be trained to fetch small objects?
I think, Henry, there’s a few golden years between that and them learning to answer back.
Hah. Update.
They want me to get some GFP so they can take it into school for ‘Show & Tell’.
I don’t know whether to be proud or to cry.
haha, just give them some thing green and glowing right?!? 😉
I think that’s cute though. Interested and want to show off their parent’s science..
It could be worse. You could have been in virology and be asked to give them HPV/HIV for show and tell! Or in physics, and they’d have asked for a quark.
Oh a quark is no problem. I’d take in a box and say it’s in there, it’s too small to see though.