Crickets

We are starting a new section in Science.  This year we are working on Life Science and decided to use Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method by Sally Stenhouse Kneidel as our guide.

Zippy did not want to do science, at all.  She whined and carried on about how boring, how hard, how much she just didn't want to do it.  This persuaded me that we had to do something really cool and fun. What is more fun than live critters?  This book is all about getting critters from nature to study.  Nature is cheap, that appealed to my frugality. One problem right now though, nature is frozen.  So looking through the book I decided that we could buy either earthworms or crickets. I let Zippy decide, and she chose crickets.

Before we bought the crickets I went over the scientific method with Zippy, which is definitely part of this book.  There was groaning, there were eye rolls, but, in the end she wrote it down.  All the complaining stopped dead it its tracks, though, when the crickets came home.  The husband is now the designated critter controller. We are going to do the science in the evening, because he is just better with handling science-y stuff than I am.

We made our own terrarium from a plastic storage bin with holes drilled in the top and play sand with a total cost at less than $5.00.    The first part of the method is observation.  Zippy and the husband enjoy watching to see what they do.  She is writing down her observations and questions.
 

Next week we will start doing the experiments in the book.  My plan is to have cricket science for about 4 weeks, then I hope it will be warm enough to release them into the wild of the backyard.