caterpillar update

You may remember my post about the caterpillars arriving at school, and all the excitement that leads to. Well after telling my past horror story I thought I should update everyone on what happened this year. So my first year was a disaster, and the 2 years that followed were great! This year...there were casualties. And again, they were my fault.

When we transfer the caterpillars into smaller containers so the kids can each have one on their desk, there are always at least 20 extras if not more. I usually let some go in our butterfly garden, and then keep the rest in case one of the kids' caterpillars die and then I can do a switch so they aren't sad. Well I packed down the extra food and carefully dumped my extra caterpillars into the container. After a few days passed, I walked into the classroom on Monday and realized all of the kids' caterpillars are HUGE and looking great, and the extra ones were looking still really puny and sad. I brought them to Nichole and asked what was wrong with them and she said probably nothing. 

Well, she was wrong. I keptlooking at them and realized what I had done. When I transfered them to the new container I forgot to switch the lids so they had a lid that had holes in it. Yup. I suffocated about 15 caterpillars. Not on purpose though! Luckily I realized this before the kids came in and I dumped them in the trashcan, and covered them up with scrap paper so they wouldn't see them. I then sprayed the trashcan with air freshener because their food stinks and I didn't want any of them nosing around the trash trying to figure out why it smelled like their food. Needless to say, I lied to my kids about my killing them. I didn't blame the janitor this time. I just said they were so big and crowded I let them go in the butterfly garden so they wouldn't be so cramped anymore. They're only 8, they totally bought it.

One activity we always do is a venn diagram comparing ourselves to caterpillars. I don't think I've ever gotten one as funny as this:

He said that they both have heads, they both can drool, and they both frass. (caterpillar poop is called frass. I get great pleasure in telling them to be careful so they don't scare the frass out of them. Of course they think that's hilarious and see how else they can use frass without getting in trouble.)

Now here's where it really gets good.

• He said caterpillars poop everywhere, and he only poops in toilets.
• Caterpillars don't run, OR walk, but we can do both. (You're wrong kid, we watched them walk around everyday.)
• They don't go to school but he does.
• And my FAVORITE: Caterpillars "they don't go on dates with other caterpillars", Me: "we can go on dates with people"

I can't wait to see what he does when we compare ourselves with butterflies!