Super exciting day in the rainy grass out by the treeline…Hopping everywhere! Frogs, toads, and baby crickets & grasshoppers.
They hadn’t gotten to interact with so many of them before, they were quite impressed; hopping things have always seemed to hop away before we could investigate. They already know exactly what a frog jumping into the swamp right before we get there sounds like.
I showed them how to capture them safely and return them to their habitat, how to look for them, and anything else I could think of during our ‘treasure hunt’ of life.
Have you ever used the line, ‘if you kill that bug, her family will miss her and she can’t bring food home to them?
Do bugs feel pain? Research says ‘maybe, it kind of seems like they mighte‘.
I skipped right past the ‘feelings of the bugs’ and simply explained each bug’s place in the ecosystem as we see them. Bugs and their surroundings are fantastic ‘science lessons’ at any age. Even a toddler can understand a great amount of how the organisms in ecosystems co-exist and what a food chain is.
There’s no advantage to killing them and you are negatively affecting the ecosystem. A very simplified version is all they need to get them thinking about it. A spider needs to eat that to catch a fly to feed a bird, to eat a rabbit, to save some crops, to feed us.
If you tell a 4yo not to be burning ants with a magnifying glass because the and family will be sad, he will be burning them when he’s 6 and begins to doubt ants have feelings…instead of simply having a solid understanding of how ecosystems work.
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