Hissing Cockroaches, Day 1

It's pretty great, the reaction you get from nineteen 8 year olds when you pull out a bunch of creepy crawly bugs. Not to mention, they're four inches long and hiss! Despite the fact that I had a really hard time sleeping last night (having dreams that they were escaping from their cage and into my bed) I was still really excited to bring them into class today for my lesson. Things went mainly according to plan, in my eyes. From the cockroaches' perspective, I think they had a pretty shitty day.

We filled out an observation sheet, where students recorded observations about the roaches' eyes, nose, mouth, legs, exoskeleton, movement, and size. They hypothesized about how the cockroaches were able to hiss, and drew a labeled diagram of one of the bugs. We had one girl who was squeamish (to say the least) but I have to give her a lot of credit for staying within a few feet of the creatures. Overall, a pretty great success! Day 2 on Thursday!