Every month one of the home school group has a "Super Duper Show and Tell" Skye and I love them. I now use them as a motivation/goal/framework for our lesson plans. If the show and tell is "Dress up as your favorite historical" then we decide on that character and study him or her and plan a presentation.
This month was about animals. Immediately Skye wanted to take Cici. Let's think about that....Indoor cat, shy at best, taken to a park for an animal show and tell where there might be a lot of other pets in similar situation. Not a good idea, plus like I said I anchor an entire lesson plan around it.
The Praying Mantis
We had a couple of praying egg sacks that we were waiting to hatch in a small terrarium. That, I thought could be a cool presentation. I could also tie it into other beneficial insects, which we were releasing almost daily, upcoming earth day, even gardening and composting, remember we have 5 worm farms running. In fact the worm farm could also become part of super duper. It was perfect.
Except for after 2 weeks nothing happened to the egg sacs.
I went into typical Danniells defense-mode. We bought another pair of egg sacs,(btw none of the four have hatched and we're looking at around 8+ weeks), in the event that none of the eggs hatched(see previous parenthesis) I jumped on the internet and tried to find a source for live mantids, I also started prepping Skye for an earthworm presentation should all else fail.
Success, the internet rocks
So after a little googling I found livemantis.com/ and ordered up and promptly received one beautiful Texas Unicorn mantis. He is so cool. He's good a healthy appetite. Very cool little fellow and a big hit at super duper.
This is the presentation board we made up.
Picture of same species as our little critter. I attempted some shots but I am still figuring out the digital camera thing.
Again same species, but not our little guy, although dead ringer for him/her.
Skye putting on her presentation. It is really a great experience where she gets a chance to speak in front of a group of people and learn how to do a Q and A, as well as sharing what she has been studying.
Speaking of sharing, maybe why I jumped on the bug theme was so that I could have an opportunity to prepare edible insects for the pot luck after the Show and Tell. Above is Meal worm Brittle.
It received a mixed review, ranging from "Yuk, that's disgusting" to "Yummy What's the recipe?" It was certainly a conversation starter. Go ahead click on the pic and see the wormy concoction.
Skye was somewhere in between.
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