Tuesday 18th May

We started today by watching a couple of short clips on National geographic kids. We watched short clips about dung beetles, jumping spiders, the Goliath Tarantula and leaf cutter ants, they are well worth a look. The children had become fascinated with Dung Beetles when we were looking in a book.
Miss B: What is the dung beetle doing?
Sabrina: He’s digging poos.
Taylor: They bury the poos.
Jessica: It rolls the poos.
Taylor: He stands on his front legs and rolls with his back legs.
The clip about the jumping spider answered our query about how many eyes spiders have, it also showed very clearly where the eyes are placed, which was interesting.
Jessica: It has 8 eyes
Taylor: It has eyes on the back of its head.
While watching the clip on leaf cutter ants the children learnt that the ants chop their food and take it back to their nest and that their nests are underground. Sabrina was taken with the way that the ants held the leaves on their back.
Today we were lucky to have Pauline come and visit us. Pauline works for MAF checking incoming cargo for undesirables. She brought in a number of insects and spiders that have been found and preserved for education and interest. The children looked very carefully at owl moths, tarantulas, red backs, wolf spiders, Stag beetles and scorpians. They spent time counting legs and talking about the tarantulas fangs and pedipalps. It was great being able to see them up close from on top and underneath.
The children have also been having lots of fun with an old OHP and some plastic insects and spiders. To start with the children were just putting the shapes on and looking at them enlarged, now they have taken to drawing around the shapes on large sheets of paper.

A correction to Thursdays instalment, we had some centipedes not millipedes and the little yellow bugs that we saw yesterday were Oleander aphids. Oleander aphids feed on Oleander and Swanplants, it pays not to spray the aphids as it will also kill caterpillars.