Going Buggy

Yesterday we read a play about bugs which provided lots of information about several insects and how they eat. The most interesting, or the ones that students remembered the most were (believe it or not) the housefly and the grasshopper. The housefly eats dead animals and animal droppings...eewww!.  The grasshopper spits brown liquid at enemies to make them back off. We learned that insects have 3 body sections: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. Today, we learned how butterflies "eat." Instead of eating, butterflies get their nourishment from drinking. They have a long, narrow tube in their mouth called a proboscis that acts as a straw. They drink nectar from flowers. I gave each student a cup (flower) with water (nectar) and they drank through their straw (proboscis). Students also designed their own bug and made a Playdough model of it. They also had the opportunity to build a super bug on a website and print their bug's "stats."