​Word to the wise, make sure that if you order earthworms, you leave yourself plenty of time or else that shipping cost will get you in the end.  Who knew earthworms would cut into my Starbucks budget? 
 
We had so much fun, observing and gently touching the worms.  Also, I learned there are so many different types of earthworms, and although the science of it all was over the heads of the 1st grade, they completely appreciated that their teacher had something to learn with them. 

​We had such a treat, or scare for some of my little guys.  We had the opportunity to observe live crickets.  Full disclosure, my husband was not a fan of having them in the house the night before and did not want to be around while I put each cricket in its own container.  
 
For the lesson, we had already done our research on cricket, read a story about a cricket who tells secrets, and drawn what we thought a cricket might look like.  Lastly, we were able to observe, draw, and label the different parts of the body of the live crickets.  At the end of the lesson, we released the crickets into a garden that was not in use.  We were attempted to do as little harm as possible to the surrounding areas while still being responsible students. 

​Stop me if you’ve been there before or heard this one, my lesson didn’t go as planned! Not even from the very beginning.  I had this great set up, a whole week of bugs, we were going to be able to get our hands dirty, observe, hold, and then release when appropriate.  Welcome to ladybugs who happened to be very popular at every hardware store, 5 to be exact.  Yes, I even tried Amazon.  
 
So, like in Friends, pivot! Holding ladybugs went to creating our own. We did our research, created our Thinking Map, and then created a tear art ladybug. While we would have loved holding and releasing ladybugs, getting our hands dirty was a great treat too! 

We had such a great time exploring how we could create robots with items that we could find within our own home.  We used an electronic toothbrush, washable markers, a pool noodle, and rubber band. 
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We were able to attach the markers to the outside of the pool noodles with the rubber band and insert the electric toothbrush into the center.  Three markers seemed to be the optimum number of markers. The students choose their colors and let their robots do their thing. With trial and error students were able to decide what worked and what did not work.  It was so much fun, an easy setup, and only a little mess when the doddle bots had a mind of their own.