Did you know that you can order ladybugs online, and they’ll be delivered to your address for you to release into your garden?
And why would you want to do that?
Just ask Esmé. She can tell you. As she digs deeper into her bug learning, she is getting more and more excited about the interesting things that bugs do. Like eat aphids and thripes and mites that will decimate your garden, for example. That’s what ladybugs are good for.
We were just listening to an expert discuss pollinating bugs on CBC’s Almanac just now, and Esmé was fascinated with what she was saying about bumblebees and honeybees and how important they are. And then she heard the woman say that sometimes wasps eat bees. She wanted to write that fact down and explore it more when we go on our upcoming field trip to the Honeybee Centre in Surrey.
Back to ladybugs … Esmé caught one the other day, and was able to study it up close. First she put it in her small ‘isolation’ bug box, one that has a magnifier lid for a better view. Then she moved it into her ‘bug condo,’ so that it would have access to food and friends (aka, her five-at-any-one-time slugs).
The lovely thing about her sustained interested in bugs — and my facilitating that passion with support from Project-Based Homeschooling — is that we’ve built up a small library of resource books and magnifying glasses and insect boxes. So when Esmé gets interested in a new kind of bug or bug fact, we can just look it up and get started studying it.
It was Sam’s birthday party yesterday, and Esmé proudly announced to the guests that she was an entomologist. One of the women asked her what that meant, and of course Esmé explained. ”An entomologist is a person who loves bugs and loves learning about bugs and studying bugs and doing all kinds of bug things. And snails too.”
I always tell aspiring writers to call themselves a writer now, because they are — writing — now, right? Same goes for my little entomologist. Nevermind what she wants to do when she ‘grows up’ (I’m 38 and don’t really feel grown up), she’s an entomologist right now.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
