Hey guys! Today I am not alone.
I'm actually with somebody who is very near and dear to my heart. Miss--
Sohn!
Miss. Tracy Sohn is here!
Special -- special arrangement to get her here and it's really important that
today I have a partner because what we're going to talk about is bugs.
Oh, God!
And I can you tell you up and down how amazing bugs is, but that's my point of view.
Some people don't feel the same.
So, as somebody who we taught together for several years and bugs always came up as
part of our curriculum,
this is an opportunity that we can discuss not only why bugs are important,
but how you can do bug exploration with touching --- and without touching.
What grosses you out?
Like the squishiness of it or, like, the creepy crawliness of it.
One really great part that I admire dearly about Tracy is bug exploration actually
happened very naturally in our class two years in a row. Tracy was able to show the
kids not only, like, she's totally comfortable in her skin and she's totally
comfortable with not being a fan of something.
And for them to see that maybe they were a little bit braver -- little bit braver than Tracy
it gave them even more confidence.
We actually have tobacco horn worms, which is actually really cool because of
the fact that there's a lot of
companies that you can order bugs online from and there's actually specific
companies that will go ahead and
take in consideration where you live and will send bug that you may find outside
in your environment and, with that being said, it -- it's this really fun exploration
later to be out and about the kids doing an activity and they're not only able to
one, recognize what these bugs are, but then pull out all this past knowledge
that you already taught them. These little guys are all over the Midwest.
Tracy, what do you see?
I see green.
You see green.
Like a lightish green and they have stripes
and, like, black little tiny dots down each, like, section.
They're so big and there's, like, that pointy
horn at the end and there's little tiny feet.
I'm going to give you some information that may scare you.
Over ninety percent of all living things on Earth are insects.
That's great.
And if I was to tell Tracy how many bugs are in her house -- I'm not going to tell you.
Or how many bugs are -- she encounters on a daily basis it would blow your mind.
So with that being said, it's the first thing that kids actually start exploring
because it's so accessible and it's really important for them to explore
because in a day and age where we tend to be really ---
we tend to be more spectators when it comes to learning... Bugs and digging in dirt is a
hardcore active exploration and that kind of active exploration and that
act of questioning is really important for this
age. Okay, in here we have Bess Beetles. And Bess Beetles are really cool
because not only are they beetles, but they eat wood and they're really fun later when
they die naturally to break them open and you find like wood chips inside of them and
the kids are like, "Wow! That's where all the wood went."
This is a wonderful time to insert vocabulary, you can do an entire journal about
what they're doing on that day.
Tracy, what are some of things that you would do with this beetle when we had him in class?
The kids really loved him and
you're not the biggest fan. What kind of stuff would you do?
Like you said, I guess talking about them a lot and it's really nice because the kids
get to lead
that more than me because I would just ask the questions and they have to
answer like, "What does it feel like?"
or, you know, "What does it feel like crawling on your body or what are the things that you see
like really up close?" And I can't answer those questions, so they really take the
lead and they kind of start leading that -- Yeah --
exploration -- Now, Tracy,
You can take a closer look. What do you notice? And I'll even grab its brother or sister and
the cool thing about these beetles is they actually make noise.
So you can discuss, like, are the beetles talking?
What are they saying? -- Something else that was kind of fun is, like, you can do a
lot of research on them. But like Rachel said, they're so active that we actually
I think made fictional stories about them too -- We did! --like that's something we did with their journals is
that, like, you know, after you go home
what do you think they do? -- The amount of information that our children retain
Yes
from doing this kind of bug playing was amazing. They were -- they became bug experts -- They did.
And they could pull out the most random
Snapple fact out of nowhere and entertain everybody and then it would be
really great because it's -- like -- we did that.
Yeah!
Seeing how interested the kids were I think made me interested not to, like,
want to touch them, but to want to explore them as well. And learn more about
it so I feel like I learned a lot during the bug explorations too just from their excitement.
And I would definitely say that by the end of the class, every single child touched a bug
Yes!
Every single child -- Like, held it in their hand --- Held it in their hand, exactly!
Held it in their hand and took away some kind of information.
Thank you guys so much for joining us because playing with bugs is
no small matter!
ok