I bet that got your attention, didn’t it? Insects eat in a variety of different ways, and how do insect mouths work is a fascinating question to answer with your kids as a science lesson. We did this towards the end of studying flying creatures when we’d learned about many different insects.
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How do insect mouths work?
Basically, insects have three different types of mouths: chewing (think ants, caterpillars, crickets); sponge (fly is the primary example I can think of); and sucking (butterfly, mosquito). We learned all of this in our Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day book.
Purpose of how do insect mouths work experiment:
To see how different insects eat (inspired by a blog post from a blog that is no longer there) [Future Ticia here, I must have been channeling my former teacher life when I first wrote this, because that’s what I had to write for every lesson plan.]
Supplies for how insect mouths work
food, shallow plate, cup, liquids to drink (I just used water), bendy straw, sponge
Let’s find out how do insect mouths work
First, we tried eating with a sponge mouth. We all agreed this was very hard to do and we wouldn’t get much food if we had to eat that way.
As a side note, I think it would have worked better if I had more thoroughly saturated the sponges beforehand.
Next, we tried to use a proboscis like a butterfly has on the plate, and agreed that butterflies would not really be able to eat from this.
Then we tried it in a flower to suck up the nectar. This worked so much better. It was still a challenge to try and get them not to use their hands. But, eventually, they mastered it.
I have no pictures of the chewing because obviously, that is how we normally eat, and figured pictures were rather unnecessary, and potentially gross depending on my kids’ manners at that moment.
Results: The kids all agree that they like chewing food the best. The straw was fun, but it was challenging to get in without using their hands.
Totally unrelated to how do insect mouths work
I found out why my tomato plant has produced NOTHING. As soon as a leaf grows he eats it, and he was huge! About 5 inches long, and when I found out what he was I was going to transplant him somewhere else, but he had already gone underground to form his cocoon. But in the meantime, the kids had a lot of fun observing him. Sigh, that’s going to be a rather useless plant.
But look what I did successfully grow! And it actually tasted good, unlike say the bell peppers I grew last year, which tasted all weird from the horrid drought and heat. Hurricane Alex did well for us in the rain department. The entire time we were out of town Texas was getting rain.
Sigh, Superman just woke up and came downstairs with the announcement, “Nobody talk to me,” guess my blogging time is done for now.
Future Ticia back, I’m gonna add in some more preschool and kindergarten science
- preschool learning stations
- how do trees grow
- will my pumpkin sink or float
- where is the baby plant in the peanut
- how to mummify a chicken (yes we did this in kindergarten)
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