Wildlife and Norbert Rillieux

First week in the Preschool classroom, we were told that Eugene was assigned a "topic"--Wildlife (see it's never too early to start doing research and presentation).

"Great!" was my answer to the beloved teacher. And the fact is on top of the housework and my own research, I officially start to worry about my kid's homework.

To comfort myself, I said in my mind, even Eugene knows google, bing, and yahoo--we sure can do it!

And yet, life always gets more complicated than we expected. Our printer ran out of ink, so we couldn't get those gorgeous pictures of prairie and rainforest animals down from the screen. What to do?

Of course, if there's only one thing that I can claim I've learned after years of study for a PhD in humanities, it's the skills of searching (yes, it's "searching", not "researching") in a library! So off I went. I managed to find a whole stack of books on wildlife with fantastic pictures. I dropped some books with pictures that might look too bloody, violent or terrifying to little kids, and some with too specialized content. I ended up with a few with bright colors and a variety of different aspects of wildlife. Among them, a book with beautifully-drawn animals on maps of different continents became my favorite. Eugene's class had been learning a "continent song"--the book would certainly appeal to the kids as well as the teachers.

So, dinner/reading (see how outrageous it is--Eugene loves reading while eating his dinner, which I actually liked doing when I was little, so how can i stop him from doing this?) time, I showed the wildlife/continent book to Eugene. it won him immediately; so did the idea of taking the book to school.

It was said he was very proud to show the book to his friends in their circle time, and that the kids enjoyed the book very much.

You think that's it? well, once it began, it would sure continue. Even before I got this first task done, there had already been another assignment: "Norbert Rillieux--what did he invent? How does his invention affect our life?" Gosh, who is he? Neither the PhD nor the PhD candidate in our family knows about the man. Looks like we need to do some serious research this time...

I may become an encyclopedia before I get my phd!