March 4th, 2010

Today we learned about exoskeletons. We already explored how insects have six legs, and now we know about how insects have "bones" on the outside of their bodies. We felt our own arms and they felt squishy and spongy. We could feel hard bone through our arms. Then we felt a "model" of an insect. The outside was hard but when we opened the "insect" it was soft and squishy inside!





We decided that an exoskeleton was important for an insect because if a human stepped on an insect, the exoskeleton would protect it. Here is a video of our observations.

We also made a poster called "Insects have exoskeletons!" We used our fine motor skills to cut our pictures of exoskeletons and paste them on our poster. Some artists added their own pictures of exoskeletons to our poster.





Our big buddies came today! We illustrated the stories that we co-wrote during their last visit. We are real authors with important stories to tell!





We built obstacle courses with our big buddies again! We loved exercising our bodies and honing our gross motor skills to maneuver through the obstacle course.




We also ate lunch in our outdoor classroom! It was so fun visiting with our friends while enjoying the sun.



We also found a worm under a log during lunch. We observed that he had no legs, so he couldn't be an insect. He also was soft and had no exoskeleton. We were worried that he would get splinters in the log so we moved him to a safe place in the garden.