Thursday 13th May

Today Shawn brought in a dead spider that his mum had found in the garage and a tiny little spider that was found on the washing line. Shawn noticed that the little spider was trying to climb and when we removed the lid to look at it more closely the spider had constructed a web across the bottom of the insect carrier so that its feet were never actually touching the bottom. Jessica had brought in a white tail spider that was broken in half, we looked at the two parts and reaffirmed that the legs of a spider. I talked to the children and let them know that the front part of a spider is called the cephalothoraxes and that the other part is known as the abdomen, they children rattled the names around laughing at the funny long words. We also got to see the little white dot on the tip of the abdomen that gave the spider its name.
After lunch a parent delivered us a treasure trove of bugs collected from the local play centre’s worm farm. I put them in the large tray and the children studied the insects with magnifying glasses. In the tray we had millipedes, a worm, and some slaters or wood lice. Finn pointed at the worm that was squiggling under some grass.
Finn: Is it a snake, Miss B?
Jessica: No it’s a worm
Miss B: How do you know it’s a worm?
Jessica: It is a worm it has dirt on it.
The children were particularly interested by the woodlice that come in a range of sizes a paid little attention to personal space regularly running over each other heads and bodies.
Jessica: There’s a family that the baby one
I wish I had long legs like that one (pointing to a woodlice)
Miss B: Why?
Jessica: Then I could touch the roof.
I drew attention to the antennae of the various creatures in the containers Jessica who spent a lot of time studying the bugs through a magnifying glass surmised that their antennae help them move, I asked her how..
Jessica: When they fall over they use their antenna's to get up.
I was very surprised that during the session the children never questioned the number of legs that the wood lice and millipede had even though the woodlice often tipped onto their backs waving their legs all over the place.