Volume 30 Issue 24 13 Aug 2021 5 Elul 5781

Kornmehl

Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl

Our Spiny Leaf Insects

The Pre-school has been caring for and learning about spiny leaf insects (phasmids) for the past two years. Over this time, we have learnt so much about these incredible creatures and have witnessed so many life-cycle changes, from egg laying, to caring for the eggs and watering them every day, to the hatching of many new babies and watching them grow, moult, and eventually die only to start the life cycle all over again.

The children and educators have gained in confidence over this time, in terms of handling these insects and taking care of them. The children in particular are fearless and love looking at them closely for long periods of time and holding them too. They have become very attached to our pets.

We have also had lots of family involvement. This year, a dad built us a beautiful new enclosure and home for our stick insects. In the holidays, different families take a few home to look after and nurture.

Our wonderful nature Educator, Lindi, has been responsible for introducing these interesting creatures into the Pre-school. They have been her babies literally and figuratively. She has successfully bred them, cared for them, shared her love for them and given away many stick insects to lots of loving families over the years.

They are very easy to look after. All they need is an enclosure, fresh eucalyptus leaves weekly and a spray bottle, to keep the leaves and eggs moist. If anyone in our school community would ever like to own some stick insects, please come down to have a chat, or email me and we will be happy to pass on some babies to you in our next hatch. 

We started with ten spiny leaf insects in our enclosure. We took them all out of their enclosure to look at closely and the children decided to name them. 

“St. Cool”, we could call one Mr Cool, because they are such cool insects. There is one Spiny that has only five legs and twisted wings.

Jesse: We can call her “Twisty”.
Daisy: This one is dark, let’s call her “Darkie”, She looks like a great climber.
Arlo: Seems like this girl is really chilled, I mean calm… let’s call her “Calm”.

And so, the children came up with very thoughtful and appropriate names for each of our special pets: Sticki, Mr Cool, St. Cool, Sleepy Head, Twisty C, Darkie, Spiky, Lovey Yo Yo and Calm.

We often use magnifying glasses to look closely at the stick insects. The children are fascinated by their prehistoric looking bodies and spiny legs.

The children’s observations, comments and thoughts were so insightful:

Daisy: The eggs are delicate, they can break.
Ava: We have to respect them on the Gadigal Land.

Daisy had a beautiful question that extended our thinking and conversation:

Daisy: The eggs just like cocoons, cocoons are very hard, and these are very soft and delicate, they are similar. I wonder what is inside now.
Jesse: The spiny leaf insects look spiky, but you can touch them, they are not scary and only look spiky, don’t feel spiky.
Uriel: They have left us so many eggs to look after.

Recently, a few of our older stick insects reached the end of their life cycle and died. This has been used as a great opportunity to educate the children about death and to help them to develop the skills to cope with this.

Unfortunately, the joy of owning a pet goes together with the heartbreak of losing one, whether because of old age, illness, or an accident. While it’s impossible to shelter children from the loss of a pet, you can help them cope with it. And because a pet’s death might be their first time losing a loved one, the grieving process can help children learn how to cope with other losses throughout life.

This helps children understand that it’s natural to feel all these emotions, that it’s okay to not want to talk about them at first, and that you’re there when they are ready to talk.

We could see that it was not moving and may have died over the weekend. Together a larger group of children came together, interested to be part of this process. We wondered and discussed why this could have happened. Talking about age, life cycles of living creatures and if maybe the stick insect was sick or had fallen and hurt itself.

We spoke further about how everything has a life cycle and everything living dies and how some things live for a long time and others for only a short time.

The group of children continued to discuss their ideas about dying and creating a special burial ceremony:

Ava: They have died, they not moving.
Daisy: It still looks the same, maybe one got hit by a car, one leg is pointing out.
Ava: My grandma is almost 100 and she lives in the nursing home.
Cooper: They don’t look like they are old.
Ava: When they get really old and tired, they get dead.
Lev: Sometimes creatures die and don’t move anymore.
Oliver: All things die when they get old.
Alice: I have seen a dead possum and lizard. I looked but I didn’t touch them.
Oliver: The spikes are to protect the creature if any creature tries to eat them, they don’t want to because they look scary.
Educator: What do we do with things when they die?
Daisy: You bury them, so no one steps on them or hurts them.
Arlo: The body disintegrates in the soil.

We took the creature carefully out of the enclosure and Ava asked if we could bury her near the other Spiny leaf insects in our garden. As Ava dug a hole, she shared that her granny is getting very old, and she is 100 years old. Ethan shared his ideas about creatures and said that when creatures are buried, they come back alive as the creature that they were scared of. Ethan then explained that this does not happen to people only creatures. 

As we buried the insects Jesse suggested that instead of only saying words, it is a good idea to create pictures or write messages for the stick insects, so they will remember us for ever. Once we buried the insects, Rafael went to get some stones to place on top of the soil. A stick was placed in the ground by Arlo, who went indoors and promptly wrote a message to the stick insects, “We will miss you stick insect.”

As we buried the “Spiny” the children were invited to share some words/messages to give to these beautiful creatures: 

Ava: I will miss you stick insect.
Jesse: You are so beautiful.
Rafi: I hope you feel safe and happy.
Levy: Goodbye stick insect.
Daisy: You are so beautiful; I love you and I will miss you so much.
Etta: Goodbye stick insects, I love you stick insect.
Archie: We won’t see you again, goodbye. I love you.
James: My grandpa died and now I don’t see him anymore.
Etta: I love you and I will miss you and I will say bye-bye. This is the stick insect heaven, and our heaven is up there.
Daisy: I miss you stick insect and I wish you could come back; goodbye and I love you.
Arlo: I will save a kiss for you.

Happy Birthday

We wish a very happy birthday to Maya Samuel (5), Adrienne Wasserman (4) and Luca Talesca (4). We also wish our wonderful educator Claudia a very happy birthday for Sunday. We hope you all have a beautiful day.