Ribosomes & Alexandria Jones

Our two fun things for today were the Alexandria Jones adventure and ribosomes, in that order. Most of our normal school stuff was forgotten because Catherine was playing a game called Dinosaur Adventure 3D on her computer all morning. Too much fun for me to interupt. The bit of time left before lunch was taken up with grammar.

On to Alexandria Jones and, as I had guessed, Catherine loves it. She enjoyed the story and really loved the puzzle game. Especially since she beat me every damn time we played. See, she and my husband can see more than one or two steps ahead when playing a strategy game. I can barely manage to think beyond the current move. It's why, in all the games of Risk I've played with my husband, I've only won once.

The ribosomes were fun. We went with ribosomes because we weren't sure what the nucleolus did when we were looking at the nucleus. It seems it produces parts of ribosomes. Those parts, 60-S and 40-S (50-S and 30-S in prokaryotic cells) go out into the cell and join up with mRNA and then tRNA and amino acids to form amino acid chains. I'm sort of clear on it but I suspect Catherine's further along. Most explanations just explain what happens. Me, I need a metaphor or image that I can picture. Don't just tell me the cell membrane is selectively permeable. Continue by saying, "like skin or a screen door." Then, aha! I get it. Fortunately the Children's Museum of Indianapolis came through for me and has a list of cell organelles and lively metaphors for their individual functions.

I sort of think we're going just a wee bit too indepth for a grade 3 look at cells but honestly, I'm having a ball and Catherine's thinks this is all terribly interesting.

NOTE: Please correct any mistakes I make regarding the functions of the organelles and feel free to share great links related to cells!