exploring entomology

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Question:  How do you move your classroom outdoors?  You provide and amazing outdoor lab with limitless opportunities.  The students at this point had been indoors for too long, they were complaining.  They were ready to be out in the garden.  They insisted on applying their indoor lessons:  identification of decomposers, beetles, and true bugs.

Problem:  Sometimes we educators are novices, or honestly we just forget.  We sent the students to their assigned posts with instructions to document and record their observations and discoveries.

Good or Bad:  Evidently we empowered these 1st graders with the belief that they were educated entomologists.  (Wow, we are good!)  Millipedes, grubs, isopods, June beetles, snakes, earthworms, lady beetles, larvae, etc.-any life forms that weren't able to camouflage themselves were brought to Mr. Painter, Mrs. Rust, or myself for accolades.

Yes:  We were honestly proud of our budding scientists, but the adults collectively understood we should have anticipated the excitment from their recently acquired knowledge.

Resolve:  We instructed the students to place all the creatures gently back to their original area so they could continue their jobs in the garden's ecosystem.

Comments:  The benefits of these lifetime moments:  sharing, purpose, discovery, responsibility, sense of community, and the support to conduct amazing journaling is worth every second because it is applied towards everyone's future.