Science is always my classes favorite subject. For our next unit we studied insects. This means that we had many living creatures in our classroom. Did I mention that I am afraid of bugs? The lesson I's supposed to teach the students is that we should care for God's creations and not to SMASH insects we see outside or in our homes. This was a difficult one for me! Our other lesson was to learn about the life cycle of insects and watch them change through the stages.
I purchased meal worms for our first insect pet. Students were introduced to their meal worms and we discussed how to care for them. I was surprised that many of the students wanted to hold them and touch them. I encouraged this as I distributed them into their containers with a spoon (I was afraid to touch them). Each day we recorded changes they went through in our science journals. We drew illustrations and discussed their different body parts and what the insect used them for. I didn't tell the students what the meal worms would change into and they were quite surprised when they started making big changes. Our meal worms shed their skin many times and eventually changed into a pupa. This was a neat transformation for the students and a few students got to see theirs change right before their eyes. One day a student came back from the weekend and found that he no longer had a pupa and that a beetle was crawling around in his container. The word got out that day that meal worms are the larva stage of a beetle. We were lucky enough to watch a few under the document camera make the change from pupa to beetle. The students loved carrying their beetle around. Once the whole class had a beetle, I had them take them home to release in their gardens or to keep as a pet.
What a fun experience!
