Dissecting Owl Pellets- Part 1

This morning instead of starting with our usual Math and English routine, I spiced things up and threw in a science lesson that I have been itching to do. The single most stand-out memory of any school lesson I have is of dissecting an owl pellet. It stands out so vibrant and crisp that I knew I had to do this with my kids. I think in part this may be one of the things that turned me on to being a homeschool mom. The fact that I get to do the fun stuff all over again. Just kidding. Kinda.

They absolutely loved it.  My 11 year old pretended to be disgusted (she was so totally into it).

My 7 year old had a little complete and utter freak out, screamed, threw a skull across the room then burst into tears then started screaming “it…it…it was a skull,  I found a skull, I touched a skull..”.

She was soon over the shock and was thrilled to find not one, not two but three skulls in her little pellet.

Adi was probably the most excited to dig in though.

Look at her little freckled face

I decided that since Payton is only 5 that I would help him do his. His attention span is only about that of a flea which I assume is about .160949 milliseconds. He was playing with Legos .89028 milliseconds after finding this little jawbone.

My sweetie little Amelia was none too interested. She sat with us and played Pee-Doh (otherwise known as Play- Doh).

Isn’t she cute?

OH. Yeah, the point. Getting there.

Interested in doing your own owl pellet dissection?

From what I have notice a lot of mommas don’t have the stomach for it. If this is you, I would recommend a virtual dissection. Which you can find at KidWings.

Here is how I began.

I started off last week by hitting the library and checking out every owl book they had.

At this point you might want to go ahead and order your pellets to give them time to arrive. I picked up mine from a homeschool conference but you can also conveniently order your  Owl Pellet Dissection Kit – Mole Skeleton and the Owl Pellet Dissection Kit – Starling Skeleton and also the Owl Pellet Dissection Kit – Vole Skeleton. Don’t forget to get some plastic dissection tweezers and dissection sticks and a good MAGNIFYING GLASS 4 DIAMETER. You can even get a little foam tray to contain it all if you like.

By the way our favorite books were :

for reference:

Owls by Sarah Courtauld : an Usborne book

Owls by Adrienne Mason Owls (Kids Can Press Wildlife Series)

Animal World: Owls by Christine Butterworth

Owls: Zoobooks by Timothy Levi Biel. Owls (Zoobooks)

We read all of the books together and talked a lot about owls. A lot. And went outside to listen for owls. I guess we should try that at night. Don’t judge. We got a good thing going with our bed time. You don’t mess with that. much. ok, so we will do that tonight. sheesh..

Today I explained to them how to carefully unwrap the pellet and showed them how to also very carefully take it apart. I also made up these nifty little Owl Pellet Dissection Worksheets.  You will need a bone sorting chart like this. We had large pellets containing 3-4 skeletons each. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to completely dissect them. My children ranging in age from 7-11 had no problems in completing this on their own.

Tip#1: Do not do this at a table in which you normally eat. Even after being disinfected it still gives me the heebie jeebies.

Tomorrow we will be reconstructing the skeleton, mounting and labeling it.

Dissecting Owl Pellets- Part 2.