Sana
Arachnoprince
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2014
- Messages
- 1,139
My son is in preschool this year, to my overwhelming joy. It's been nice to have a few hours to myself each day. During parent/teacher conferences in October my son's teacher asked my significant other and I what we were good at. The school tries to involve parents in the classroom by using their strengths and things they enjoy. Seems like a good plan on their part but I'm a workaholic and better at being a provider than super-mom, so the idea of getting involved in the classroom and spending time with sixteen three to five year old kids strikes fear in my heart. I told the teacher that I seemed to be fairly skilled at raising T's, thinking that she would respond negatively toward the hobby (like many people). No luck there as she found it very interesting and asked if I would be willing to play show and tell with them. Dug my own grave there.
This is how I found myself a couple days before Halloween loading four T's of varying sizes and species (a. metallica, g. pulchripes, p. vitatta, and p. sp. "Santo Domingo") into my truck along with my family and heading to school. At the school we sat down on the floor with the class and one by one showed them each spider. We intentionally took two T's that were hungry and a few crickets so that the kids could see them hunt and eat. We answered questions about where each was from, why they different colors, what the difference was between arboreal and terrestrial, were they as soft as they looked, how to say spider in ASL, and a million more. The T kids were such a hit that three other classes asked us to come in. The biggest disappointment to the whole experience as far as the kids were concerned was that they couldn't touch or hold the spiders.
For myself I learned the joy of teaching people about T's. If I'm ever asked to participate in another project to educate children about them, I definitely won't hesitate to do so. I think that it would be interesting to educate adults as well, but I've noticed where my friends and family are concerned at least, that adults are much less receptive than children. I've seen some posts here about using molts in projects that are donated to various facilities to educate people. If anyone has been involved in such projects I would love to know how that came about and how I might also get involved.
This is how I found myself a couple days before Halloween loading four T's of varying sizes and species (a. metallica, g. pulchripes, p. vitatta, and p. sp. "Santo Domingo") into my truck along with my family and heading to school. At the school we sat down on the floor with the class and one by one showed them each spider. We intentionally took two T's that were hungry and a few crickets so that the kids could see them hunt and eat. We answered questions about where each was from, why they different colors, what the difference was between arboreal and terrestrial, were they as soft as they looked, how to say spider in ASL, and a million more. The T kids were such a hit that three other classes asked us to come in. The biggest disappointment to the whole experience as far as the kids were concerned was that they couldn't touch or hold the spiders.
For myself I learned the joy of teaching people about T's. If I'm ever asked to participate in another project to educate children about them, I definitely won't hesitate to do so. I think that it would be interesting to educate adults as well, but I've noticed where my friends and family are concerned at least, that adults are much less receptive than children. I've seen some posts here about using molts in projects that are donated to various facilities to educate people. If anyone has been involved in such projects I would love to know how that came about and how I might also get involved.