Last week we went out on a garden walk to check out the vegetable garden I planted with my students last spring. We had a great time looking at all the different plants that were growing- tomatoes, okra, green beans, and flowers. We picked a few of the tomatoes that were ripe and some of the students took them, washed them up, and tried one (they were tiny cherry tomatoes).


We also had a few explorers find a newly emerged insect (I think it was a young grasshopper) standing on a leaf next to its discarded exoskeleton in our school butterfly garden. One of the students asked if the insects skin has to come off like Popcorn's (our class snake) because the skin didn't grow. YEAH!! What a great connection!! I love it when I see kids take what they know and apply it to new situations. I was able to give an impromptu mini-lesson on insects anatomy and then we talked about how they are the same and different than snakes. I know it is hard to see in the picture, but the insect is on the underside of the leaf closest to the top of the picture. The exoskeleton is near the tip of the same leaf.