Big Fish

Lately the boys have been curious about the insides of things, and have been asking for a dissection. Since they were both interested in fish, that is what we decided on. Now, since I am not a fisherman, nor do I own a pole, and at the time we did this the pond by us was still frozen over, I decided to contact the nearest meat market and see what they could do for me. It took two weeks, but they were able to get their fish contact to keep a fish intact for us. We ended up with a nice, 2.5lb bass.

Since I am not a biology person, I needed to follow someone else’s guide in order to know where I was supposed to cut. I used this link from the Mission Science Workshop: Fish Dissection, and we compared the innards to Wikipedia’s fine drawing. I did copy out all the words from the diagram in the form of a worksheet, here. You’ll notice that I put the Wiki fish on there for my kid’s reference. It is nothing fancy, but I allowed the kids to look up all the words on Wikipedia in order to see photos of what they would be looking for and to get the definitions before the actual day of the dissection, and that helped to get them ready.

As far as materials, I used:

1. A cheap metal cookie tray, that is now only going to be used for science

2. A set of Xacto knives

3. Latex gloves for me and the kids

4. scissors

5. tweezers

6. goggles for everyone

7. petri dishes, with lids. I used these to collect sample of all the stuff we wanted to look at under the microscope.

If you are interested in looking at your samples under your microscope, then don’t forget your glass slides and other prep tools!

Also, if you have pets, make sure they are separated from the work area. You don’t need any accidents when there are knives and kids involved.

The fish was fresh, so it didn’t stink any worse than a fish should stink, but it was a balmy 50 degrees F outside, so we set up the table on the back porch, donned our jackets, and moved the fun into the well ventilated outdoors.

If the kids should want to do this again, I’d be willing, since it was a good experience. Both kids enjoyed it, and we all learned a lot. Changes that would be appropriate for next time, assuming the kids are much older:

1. I would have them do some of the cutting. I felt that they were too young this time around to be trusted with the knives when things were so slimy.

2. We would do an actual heart dissection. We did a bit of that this time, but the heart was small, and the kids were vying for space to see, and it just didn’t work out so well. I think if they were older, could do the cutting on their own, and each had their own heart to work with, then things would have gone smoother.

3. I will consider doing a comparison dissection…. maybe a frog, or whatever else the science shop happens to have. Looking at one animal is very informative, but comparing two different ones gives a better picture of how bodies differ from species to species.

All in all, the kids did well. In fact, they were so fascinated, that we are now currently doing a human body unit and creating own body models. I’ll post that project once we are finished with it.

Here are a few pictures of our fish experience: