Creepy Crawly Things

As I've mentioned before, bugs aren't really my thing. I'm trying to embrace them, or more truthfully, I'm trying to not freak out when I see them. Z-man's teacher, who is a true nature lover, has reminded me several times that he will learn to react as I do and she has encouraged me to react curiously and without fear. Blah. Easy for her to say. And truly it is. She feeds the class crickets daily with meal time in the class. She brings in walking stick bugs that she has caputred with her own hands. She brings slimy slugs, furry caterpillars, and cockroaches into her class in various containers for observing.

I'm trying to embrace the creepy crawlies. I had white grubs in my classroom for a while. We found them while digging for worms and put themt in with grass we were growing. We watched over about two weeks while the grubs destroyed the grass by eating the roots. Cool stuff.

Then, one of my students brought in a woolly bear caterpillar she found on her way to school. Next thing I knew, I was Amazon Prime-ing a butterfly house, complete with five painted lady caterpillars to keep our Woolly Bear company. Today was the first day with all the caterpillars in the classroom. Before I knew it, I was scrapping my lesson plan and embracing my students' questions about caterpillars and worms, our other class pets.

We read books about worms, caterpillars, and butterflies. Then, my students looked at the books in small groups and my assistant and I led them in conversations about similarities and differences between worms and caterpillars.

We poured out our worms and pulled out the caterpillars (my braver assistant took on this task). The students made observations about what they saw.

Finally, my students told me about the observations they had made and the facts they had learned. We made this awesome Venn Diagram!