Wow, Ice Insects!

Gardening has been a huge interest at Buckle My Shoe and naturally, spending more time in the garden leads to further discoveries. As our little ones have been digging and planting, they have come across many friends of the garden. These friends have included slugs, snails, beetles, butterflies, bees and many more. As soon as they spot an insect, they get so excited and want to get a closer look and know more about its features and how it moves.

To extend on this interest, we got our pretend insects out and began looking at them closely. Some of them had wings, while others had a hard shell body. They each were in different colours and patterns as well. Some of our little ones were interested in grouping them by their similarities, while others were just interested in a few favourites.

The following day, one of our wonderful teachers had a surprise for our little ones. When they came outside, they noticed ice cubes on the table. But as they moved closer, they were able to see that inside each ice cube, was a pretend insect. This really got our little ones excited, as they each reached for a cube to have a closer look. “What’s in your cube?”,  they asked each other and many of our tamariki were able to label the different insects. As they held onto their ice cube, they noticed it was melting and soon the focus turned to get their insects out! Some of our tamariki realised that they could make the ice melt by rubbing it between their warm hands, while others took a different approach and used water and a paintbrush to paint the ice cube and make it melt.

Eventually all the insects were freed from the ice and our tamariki continued to explore them together.