Wednesday, May 11, 2016

The Mealworms Are Here! The Mealworms Are Here!

As parents who stayed for Morning Mindfulness can attest, we were all so very excited to learn that we would get our mealworms today. This is an annual event that returning students look forward to with great anticipation.

We started today with a warm-up exercise. I have a lovely set of life cycle cards that detail the life cycles of the apple tree, butterfly, frog, hen, and mouse. I scattered these cards in random order all over the room, and children scrambled to find all cards of each living thing, and then put them in the correct order. We talked about several important things - that some things are born from eggs, some from seeds, some things are born alive. In other words, understanding that living things have life cycles which include birth, growth, reproduction, and death, but that these cycles vary from one species to another.

I then showed pictures of the mealworm/darkling beetle life cycle. We are starting about mid-way through the cycle, as we don't see the eggs, and many of the mealworms have already grown from tiny worms to medium sized worms (as evidenced by the many shed skins we found). Now we will wait for our larva to turn into pupa, and finally to young adult (lighter in color) and adult (the full grown darkling beetle). This should happen by the end of the school year.

We wrote down detailed observations using nearly all of our senses and drew a picture using the ABCD method (must be Accurate, Big, Colorful, and Detailed).




Each child made their own mealworm habitat, and made sure the mealworms have all it needs to survive - food, water, air, and shelter. It will be each child's responsibility to care for their three mealworms, and to document growth and changes each and every school day.


1 comment:

Heather Halabu said...

Marcel was SO excited about this yesterday!!