I am partnered to teachers in a school serving a small village (Little Melton) where there is a lot of community involvement with many Mums helping in the classroom and in the playground.
As I also happen to have a child at the school, many children regard me during my 'scientist' visits as another helping mum-the one who comes with a microscope. But when I went in one day wearing full laboratory gear (labcoat, gloves and mask) it was brought home to me just how alien the concept of a scientist mum is to children. On this occasion my dramatic entrance made their eyes boggle, and they were stunned into silence! We went on to explore their ideas of why I wore these clothes, and found that the notion of protecting what I deal with from me, rather than protecting me from it, created some puzzlement.
Using a microscope with young children is great fun, with a whole new world opening up to the children. Low magnification is an idea they seem to be able to grasp fairly readily, but when their eyes were opened to the truly microscopic world of their school pond life-one that is invisible to the naked eye-they became quite confused. I was quite unprepared for the way they became very uncertain, even disbelieving if they couldn't see a smaller, 'real' version of the magnified image.
We all had our eyes opened that day.