Wonderings!

Answers to some of our wonderings!

What types of bugs are there?

Insecta (insects), arachnids (spiders), molluscs (slugs and snails)

What do bugs do?

They make honey

They recycle - maggots eat dead sheep and turn it into soil again

They pollinate flowers to give us fruit

They can look pretty

Do we need to care about the bugs?

Yes we do, because if we didnt we wouldnt have fruit or honey. We wouldnt have any fantails or lizards or trout, frogs.

Fun activities!

We went on a bug hunt! We went for a walk down to the reserve with Mrs Wheeler, armed with ice cream containers and a special bug container.

We split up into 2 groups, Mrs Wheeler took the boys, and Miss Findlay took the girls. We hunted in bushes, long grass, dug in the dirt and all sorts! We found a few small spiders, a couple of centipedes, and a couple of larger spiders!

We had a great time!

We also watched some sections of a DVD by Ruud Steinpaste (The Bug Man!!!)

We watched sections about Goliath spiders (a type of tarantula), Black Widow spiders, Funnel web spiders and Killer bees!

It was very interesting, and a little scary in some spots!

Mr Eslers visit!

On Monday Mr Esler came to talk to us about what sort of bugs there are, and what bugs do. We sorted out this information by putting it into a Told Us, Made Us Wonder chart:

Mr Esler told us:

If there were no bugs there would be no frogs, fantails, fruit, trout, lizards.

He explained a huhu beetles life cycle.
=egg, grub, pupae, beetle.

The huhu beetle lives for 1 week.

Butterflies and moths are different because they have different patterns on them.

Huhu beetles have no mouths and no digestive system


Moths have soft antennae.

The bees and flies we see are girls. The boy bees are called drones.

Silk come from silk spiders.

Insects help pollenate fruit plants.

Insects help us to recycle - maggots eat dead sheep and turn it into soil. Worms do this too!

Bees make honey!

We are now wondering:

How can we care about the bugs more? Jordyn

Why do wasps not die after stinging? Jessica

Finding Out

For our first finding out activity, in groups we looked at pictures of spiders and insects, and talked about their body parts.

We noticed that Spiders have 8 legs, 2 body parts called the abdomen and head thorax. We learnt that the scientific name for a spider is Arachnid. A spider has an exoskeleton, which means his skeleton is on the outside of his body.

We noticed that insects have 6 legs, 3 body parts called the head, thorax and abdomen. They belong to the Insecta family.

We found out that snails and slugs belong to the Mollusc family.

To sort out what we found out, we have drawn diagrams of spiders and insects into our books, labelling the correct parts.

Wondering wall

Now that we have tuned in to our big question "Are bugs important?", we needed to think about what we want to know now.

We discussed the things that we are wondering, with Miss Findlay and Mrs Allen.

We are wondering:

What types of bugs are there? - Jordyn

What do bugs do? - Grace

What do bugs do to survive? - Jessica

What plants keep bugs living? - Grace

Why don't we care about the bugs? - Grace

Do we need to care about the bugs? - Bradley

What are the supermarkets going to do if there are no bugs? - Grace

Who can we see about caring for bugs? - Jordyn

What is in the sprays that kills bugs? - Bradley

Could the sprays kill us? - Maddie

After we thought about our wonderings, we needed to figure out how we could find the answers. We made a list of places we could go to find out more:

• Books
• Computer - Internet
• Museum
• Study bugs go to a bee keeper, go to the reserve, school grounds
• Ask someone who knows about bugs: Mr Esler, a bee keeper, the worm man

Mystery box

Our final tuning in activity was mystery box. Miss Findlay had a box with something inside it, and we had to ask her YES or NO questions, to try and figure out what was inside the box.

Through our questioning, we found out that it was a bug, then more specifically a beetle. We found out it was brown, it did not have 4 legs, and it did not have 8 legs.

On our final question, Jake got the answer correct! He guessed that in the box was a Huhu beetle!

We then passed the beetle around, having a closer look.

Playdough creations!

For todays tuning in activity, we had to create something using playdough to show what we know about bugs. It was really fun!

"When you make stuff it's really fun!" Jessica thought.

"We could make all kinds of bugs" said Tom.