Our Friend From the Garden!

Today when our little ones were exploring outside, some of them stopped near one of our planter boxes. This was not unusual, as they love checking on our plants to see that they are growing well and have enough water. But after a few minutes, the group became bigger – they must have found something exciting!!

Moving closer, parts of the conversation could be heard with one child saying “look there on the leaf”, while another child said, “I know what that is. It’s a praying mantis”. We decided to take a closer look and went to get a magnifying glass. We could see that this creature had a big green body, many legs and two eyes. It was staying extremely still and it was hard to see it, as it camouflaged well with the leaves around it.

When we created our garden, we had discussions around caring for the insects as well as using our gentle hands. Our tamariki remembered this and were careful not to hurt it. Using just their eyes, they continued to observe the praying mantis in its natural habitat.

Looking so closely brought about another surprise – there were two praying mantises in the garden! We wondered if they were friends. Observing this second praying mantis, we checked to see if it had all the same features as the first one and we were able to confirm it did.

To extend on our knowledge we carefully moved the praying mantis on a leaf to the table so that we could see it up close on a better surface. Using the curriculum area of Art, our little ones began drawing a portrait of the praying mantis. It’s not always easy to replicate a 3-dimensional object onto paper, but our little ones used different strategies to do this. 👏

Some of our tamariki wanted to paint a picture of the praying mantis, and so we moved our little friend inside on the art table to continue with our real-life portraits. Our little friend began exploring on the table and even climbed onto the paint pot, where a bit of paint got on his back.

After that, it joined mat time, sitting on one of our kaiako’s knee while we did songs and stories. Our little ones were so happy with their new friend and wondered what to call it. We thought it was time to return the praying mantis, back to its nature habitat and we were so thankful for the close up interaction we had.

The following day when our little ones arrived, they headed straight back out into the garden to see if their friend was still there and yes, there it was - sitting on a leaf. (We could tell, because it still had a bit of paint on it’s body). We decided to extend on our knowledge by researching more about praying mantises and going on another insect hunt in our garden.

It is so important for our little ones to have real life experiences that they can refer to, to support their learning about the wonderful world around them. We hope to see our little friend again soon!