Energy Pyramid

Title: Energy Pyramid
Date: March 13, 1987
Category: School Assignment
Current Status: Submitted to the Texas Board of Education for use in their Science Curricula

Ahhhh... another fabulous example of what happens when my lack of artistic ability joins forces with a 6th grade science assignment.

Here we have what is called the "Energy Pyramid" that explains... uhhh... something. I'm not sure I completely understand this anymore. I get the sun... it sends the heat and light and crap that makes the plants grow, like corn, which is eaten by the chickens, which are then eaten by people. But why is the sun at the top and outside of the pyramid? If it's not in the pyramid, then is it really part of the pyramid? Does this imply that the sun eats the people who eat the chickens who eat the corn that eats the sun's energy? Is this specist tripe saying that humans are where energy ends because we are the top? What if a human gets eaten by a tiger? Does the tiger get a little triangle above the human? I'm confused. Particularly since energy doesn't disappear, it just transfers to other things. The pyramid concept seems to say that everytime something is eaten, the amout of energy that exists gets smaller until it disappears altogether. Dammit! How am I ever going to smack those fifth graders around on that stupid Jeff Foxworthy show if I can't even understand the crayon representations of basic scientific concepts!??!?

I apparently did a "good job" and got an "A" despite the fact that my chicken looks like a fat crow with tassled carrots for legs. And that human has a really gimpy arm. And why is the chicken eating what looks like straw? It's supposed to be corn, but corn doesn't usually appear as yellow sticks.

Review Unit 7 Chapter Three - Plants and Animals

Title: Review for Unit 7, Chapter 3
Date: circa 1987
Category: School Assignment
Current Status: Recycled

I think this is 6th grade science/social studies material.
I typically saved anything that I considered a "creation." In this case, since I drew (pencil) and colored (crayons) these eight scenes found in nature from scratch, this counts as a "creation."
The art is obviously terrible, but hey, I was 11 and art was never my talent anyway. The perspective in each box is ludicrous and even the crayon use seems below my usual level of quality (I was an excellent crayon user.... I won awards).
In box 1, we have "Tundra" featuring what appears to be a wolf and a bird that flew in from a Picasso exhibit. I guess the green things are shrubs of some kind, but they look more like gelatinous life forms.
Box 2, "Taiga", features a bear... or horse... I have no idea what the heck that is. I couldn't actually remember what Taiga actually is, so I had to look it up. Since it is some kind of cold forest, I guess it's a bear and two squirrels although one squirrel looks like it was cross bred with an aardvark.
Box 3 contains a "Which of these things is not like the other?" style blue sky, an enormous spot of white space which may or may not be a cloud, a raccoon, and some other gray mammal. This is of course, "Temperate Forest." You'll notice my habit of putting tree style vegetation towards the top right corner.
Box 4 contains a scene from a "Tropical Rain Forest" that obviously shows a forest after it was mostly cleared by humans, since there a whopping three trees in it and they are all about 5 feet tall. This forest is inhabited by two snakes and a zombie monkey. Those blue dots might be butterflies... or fairies.
By the time I got to 5 & 6, I must have been getting bored with this assignment as there is less going on in these two than any of the others. "Grassland" has half a tree in the unusually chosen left corner and has a vulture-canary soaking up some rays. Meanwhile, there is an unknown creature near the bottom left that I can't identify. It might be a duck... or a Tremors worm popping up out of the ground. The "Desert," meanwhile, features a cactus, yet another snake, and a turtle. Also note that this is a nighttime scene as you can tell by the floating banana in the gray colored sky.
The last two panels are water scenes. "Marine" shows sea life such as a starfish, dolphin, Barney the Dinosaur, Strawberry flavored jello dessert complete with streamers, and an albino hoagie sandwich. "Fresh Water" presents a serene pond featuring a fish in mid-evolutionary change to a beaver, another freaking snake, the common badminton goldfish, frog, birthday cake for frog, and several plants that lack any root systems and just pop up from the surface of the pond.

You will note that I received an "A+" for this endeavor and also two bonus bunny rabbit stickers. This makes me wonder... when you go to school to get certified to teach children, is there a class you have to take that gives you the sliding scale of low expectations?

*Click on the Image to see a much bigger version and all the great detail*