Love L – lice, lego and ladybirds

So after seeing Choice chambers on Science Sparks (here) I was really keen to do them with my son – so decided that L could be for Lice. It actually turns out that if you Google lice (as I did to be sure of how many legs to give them) that it turns out lice as in headlice and that they are insects – where as Woodlice are crustaceans . It did lead to an interesting conversation which lead me to discover that my preschool 4 year old knows that spiders have 8 legs, and are not insects who have 6 legs! (I was suitably impressed).

dark

We didn’t have the right materials at all but I thought it was still worth a try.

First we coloured in some card black.

choicechambers

We used an old scone tray and split it into 4 – 2 dark and 2 light, then we put in a bit of tissue paper and added a drop of water (using a milk bottle lid) – one in white and one in black. Meaning that the choices were dark and wet, dark and dry, light and wet, and light and dry.

We then discussed where we thought the woodlice would be most likely to go

– He said the dry and light section.

woodlice

We went out into the garden and talked about where we might find the woodlice.

I showed him the dark damp parts of the garden and we collected some out of our compost bin.

tub

We collected them in a dark, wet container.

Note he still thought that they’d prefer the light and dry section.

chambers

I noticed a flaw in my plan that they couldn’t climb over the ledge (or not likely to) but there was dark and dry Vs light and wet; then dark and wet Vs dry and light. Very discouragingly the first place they went was indeed the dry and light – eek!!

But they soon got moving and both sides preferred the dark sides.

darkandwet

After moving all the woodlice across we made the dark side darker, and did light and dry Vs dark and wet – and indeed they all went to the dark and wet. So now my son will tell you that woodlice prefer the shade and the rain :O)

returning

We made sure the woodlice weren’t away from their habitat for too long and returned them where we found them.

mixingbrown

We had great fun mixing together different colour paint in order to get brown to make our woodlice.

paintinglice

My 8 year old has been trying to teach his younger brother that his left hand is the one you can make an L shape with. Unfortunately he was unable to paint this with his broken arm so here you can see my hand. We then glued on antennae, legs and eyes to make a woodlouse.

lforlice

Now my son thought that LOVE was a much nicer L word

love

Of course we talk about L things whilst we are out and about

loaves

Loaves

lolly

Lolly

lego

Not forgetting LEGO

and

Ladybirds

We started simply by drawing black on red paper.

drawingladybirds

There are many ladybird ideas I want to try and adapt but this is the main one that inspired me.

We painted the black paper (as before) and drew around different sized coins for circles and cut them out.

makingcircles

blackcircles

Then out of red paper we cut out a body and some wings (I later realised that actually the body would have been better off black or even white).

addingladybirddots

We glued the black spots onto the wings.

ladybirdwings

And then stuck the wings to the body.

ladybirds

We also did the ladybirds using plates. We cut a plate in half and used that as a template to draw around for the wings.

cuttingplates

paperplateladybird

This time we added some googly eyes.

ladybirdplatewitheyes

There’s so much more to do. Like painting ladybirds on toilet rolls, and bee plates. Another idea I like is using hand and foot prints as the main body.

15 thoughts on “Love L – lice, lego and ladybirds”

  1. I’m so glad you enjoyed the choice chambers! It sounds like you have a very clever 4 year old!
    Thanks so much for mentioning us. Emma xx

    Reply
  2. Another fascinating letter journey. Mine all love bug collecting, great to link it to letters. Do they really drink through their bottoms?

    Reply
  3. aw, cute. I found this through Creative Mondays on Judy H-J’s Thoughts. I have linked in a post about some retro prawn cocktails I did. Have a nice week.

    Reply
  4. What a great study! I would have never done lice for L, lol. Great choice, though, because it looks like a he learned quite a bit and had fun while doing so.

    Reply
  5. What a great experiment! I had to google to be sure — those are what we called roller bugs because they will roll in a ball to protect themselves. I am so proud now to know that they are properly called woodlouse. Your 4 year old is way ahead of me! Thanks so much for sharing on Busy Monday at A Pinch of Joy. Hope to see you again!

    Reply

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