Science Sunday/ Inchworm

The other night when I took the garbage out, I looked down and right at my feet was an inchworm. I was a wee bit surprised, since this is the first one I have seen around here. Selena was in bed, so I ran and grabbed a jar. Papa jumped up to see what I was all excited about. I told him I found an inch worm, and showed him where it was. He was looking and looking right over the top of it, yet didn’t realize this little green fellow was an inchworm. I finally pointed it out to him, and he said, “You’re crazy that is not an inchworm.” About that time it began to move and he was shocked, he had never seen an inchworm before. I wanted leaves and a stick, but Papa didn’t think it was a good idea to go out in the back yard in the dark since we have had raccoons hanging around. I think I need to homeschool him, especially when he told me he seen one of these the other night and an ant was wrapping it up in a web. Can you hear me laughing?? Or do you hear me banging my head to make sure I heard him correctly??

The following morning I showed the inchworm to Selena. I told her I found something and tried to make her guess what it was. She truly just did not know.

She couldn’t see it very well in the jar, so I did have to take it out on some white paper for her.

Before investigating it we looked inchworms up on the computer so that Selena could get more of an idea what she was looking at. Of course we discussed all the different aspects of an inch worm. Selena decided she wanted to let it go when we were done. I put it back in the jar and said we would a little later. We returned to take it out and let it go to discover something a little different. I don’t know if she has laid eggs or what. Selena thought this was curious as well. We searched to see what we could come up with, but our searches didn’t give us enough information to determine for sure what we found. I read descriptions to make me think they possibly are eggs and yet see pictures that tell me they probably are not. Maybe it has to do with the type of inchworm it is.

It really topped this investigation when we were taking our nature walk and walk to the library, I was able to show Selena the small silk strands hanging from some of the trees to be more evidence of how the inchworm comes out of the trees. Selena thought that was pretty cool to see so many thin strands of silk just hanging from the trees. It’s amazing what we can experience and see when we just take the time to really take a closer look at the world around us.