While the children were out on a nature walk with Mrs. St.Onge three weeks ago, they came across egg sacks on the trees in our school yard. The children removed the egg sacks from the branches brought them inside and placed them in our classroom terrarium where Sparkles had left us one of her own egg sacks.
Yesterday Ryan was observing the terrarium and realized that some of the egg sacks had hatched and baby praying mantises were now roaming around freely.
Some of them had gotten out of the terrarium and were roaming right in our room!
The children went right to work. We researched how to take care of baby praying mantises and found out that their favourite food is fruit flies.
Hummmm. Where could we find fruit flies?
In the compost digesters of course!
A group of children went outside and captured some fruit flies for our new babies.
Although we were feeding and taking good care of the babies we learned that these species are very aggressive towards each other. If kept in groups they will eat each other, especially when one or two become slightly larger than their brothers and sisters.
The children decided that it would be best if we released the babies into their natural habitat. The children decided our brand new outdoor classroom would be a
perfect new home for them.
A praying mantis egg sack can hold anywhere from 10-400 eggs. Our total count today was 27 babies. The children think only one of the egg sacks in the terrarium has hatched and more are soon to come. We wait and see.
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