Monthly Archives: May 2013

Snails, snails, and… more snails?

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[From school blog]

In the Blue Room, the children have been loving their snails.  Very often throughout the week, the children will ask to remove the top from our terrarium to be given the chance to hold the snails and let them crawl up their arms.  We also have taken the snails out of the terrarium and placed them on pieces of wood so that the children can use our small magnifying glasses to more closely examine the snails outside of the terrarium.

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Annabel placed a snail right on Sophie’s hand.  While crawling along, we will ask the children, how does it feel?  Hmm… I wonder, is it ticklish?

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The snails are definitely entertaining!  Despite their reputations of slowness, our snails definitely are very active!  They are very visibly on the go and looking all around them as we can see their eye stalks constantly moving.  The children also enjoy being able to see the moist trail that the snails leave on their skin.  Of course, this means a LOT of trips to the bathroom sink afterward!

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Sophie brought this snail over to hear the end of a story on the rug.

They have been a pleasure to have in the classroom, and it has also been so nice to see how caring and gentle the children are with the snails.  Because of their care and concern for the snails, they are really able to stop themselves, slow down, and admire these tiny creatures.

To add to our delight, just recently, we came in one morning to find some surprises.  Tiny, white, spherical objects were found in a clump buried in the soil of our terrarium… could it be??  They were!  Eggs!

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You’ll notice them right up against the glass, in the soil in the bottom left corner.  After some research, we believe that it will perhaps be 2-4 weeks until these eggs will hatch.  So we will just have to wait and see if it happens before the end of our school year!  It sure would be exciting!