Pinewood Third Graders Eat Chocolate Bugs

At Pinewood Christian Academy (PCA), the third grade class recently learned about invertebrates. To cement their teaching in place, the third grade teachers, Mrs. Pam Daniel and Mrs. Crystal DeLoach, hosted two fun activities: Birds and Worms and Eating Chocolate Bugs.

On Thursday, September 24, Mrs. Daniel took the 40 students to the Outdoor Classroom and taught the class how worms and other insects help to feed birds or mammals. She also addressed the use of camouflage by insects to prevent predators from eating them. Following her lesson, Mrs. Daniel split the classes into groups before hiding different colored worms on the ground for the students to find as ‘birds’ which helped the class get a better picture of how camouflage assists insects in hiding. Then, the class split into lines and approached Mrs. Daniel while flapping their ‘wings’ before being fed a gummy worm, simulating how birds depend on worms for food and how they eat.

On Friday, September 25, Mrs. DeLoach brought each child and adult present a handmade “chocolate bug,” which each student then had to at least try. These bugs were not real; they were made by Mrs. DeLoach out of milk chocolate for the ones who attended her lesson. Before allowing the children to feast upon their chocolate snack, Mrs. DeLoach reviewed Mrs. Daniel’s lesson from Thursday and then taught how people sometimes eat insects as food. She then passed around real bugs that were flavored or candied to show how they can be eaten as snacks.

The conclusion to the third grade science week over invertebrates involved more than one leap of faith, and drew curiosity from both adults and children alike as they discovered what it meant to be an insect firsthand.

By Miranda DeLoach