Posted on: June 20th 2014
On Monday 16 June, Reception walked up to St. Andrew’s Church Hall, where they were joined by all sorts of wiggly and wild visitors. For their final topic in Reception, the children are learning about minibeasts (invertebrates). This year, because we have some budding herpetologists in the class, we have extended the topic to cover small reptiles and amphibians as well. And what better way to learn about these small creatures, than seeing them in the flesh and being allowed to handle them.
The children were introduced to a hissing cockroach and found out what good mummies they are, carrying their eggs around in a big sack to keep them safe until they are ready to hatch. They were allowed to hold the cockroach and described it as being ‘Very tickly!’They felt the smooth, hard skin of an enormous millipede and learned that every now and then, they have to take off their skins, like a coat, because they have grown out of it. The children were very interested to see the skin that a spider had grown out of. It was very delicate, but it was still quite scary as the legs were so hairy and, as Jones pointed out, ‘...you can still tell where the fangs would go.’At one point the children thought that they had found themselves in ringside seats for a big fight as a cricket was put into the container of an aggressive praying mantis, but disappointingly for some, ‘Manny’ the mantis was in too friendly a mood to attack!
The children met stick insects and a hermit crab, a scorpion and a corn snake (called Princess Jasmine!) They were able to handle most of the animals and almost everyone was very keen to do so, or at the very least, happy to give them a stroke. We were very impressed by the children who let a huge African snail slither across their palms (lots of hand washing afterwards!)A mossy looking gecko and some very leaf-like stick insects gave the children a really good idea of how some animals camouflage themselves in their natural habitats and a fire-bellied toad introduced the children to ideas of animals using colour as a means of defense - his vividly orange, mottled stomach warning of his toxicity - something we will be looking at in Art lessons later this week.
The children seemed very taken with a smiley faced, bearded lizard, enjoying feeling it’s spiky, dry skin. We didn’t get to see his beard as he was clearly feeling too cosseted by all the stroking, to feel the need to puff up and scare us away!
The show ended with time for a few questions to be answered, but knowing our Reception, there will be a lot more questions to come and a lot of child-led learning on it’s way!
See photos of Reception's visit from The Wiggly Wild Show:http://youtu.be/TpQRpSWDFNI
