The children were all busy at work doing different activities when one child came rushing over to say that she had found a snail. The children gathered around to see and sure enough, there it was, hidden between the cracks of one of the building gears. We decided to keep it to study for a while; we made a jar into a miniature snail habitat with sticks and bark and leaves for him to munch on.
Our little guest sparked lots of different questions. What does it eat? Is it a boy or a girl?
Some of the children were fascinated watching the snail slowly move along my hand.
During it's stay in our room, our snail friend got to ride a polar bear!
The children thought that the snail may be getting dry, so we gave him a little pool to hang out in. He promptly escaped the pool.
They were absolutely thrilled to let take turns letting the snail slowly move across their hands. It gave them a chance to get a closer look.
The children got out the magnifying glasses to take a closer look at our little visitor.
A couple of times we thought we had lost it, but he always seemed to be hiding inside a piece of the rolled bark.
Of course, on Friday we said farewell to it and sent it back to it's natural habitat. I wonder what interesting creature we will discover next?
Thanks for posting this. I noticed that Adelia has been more interested in snails lately...
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting Carly! They are pretty funny little creatures. It's fascinating to watch them slowly move around leaving their trail of slime. A snail is a great temporary class pet for more reasons than just being super cute and hard to lose. Children are naturally drawn to living things and they will make statements and ask really great questions to further their knowledge and become experts. Gathering around the snail with magnifying glasses encourages conversation and language between children who may not always play together. Having our little snail visitor also gave the children a chance to be compassionate about a living thing and to understand how they must handle and treat it (no eye poking, gentle touching, etc.) The hope is that the compassion and understanding that the children gain from exposure to these little creatures will be expressed and demonstrated in the way they treat other people.
ReplyDelete