My Dear Watson, Do Not Just Look: Instead, Observe

Caterpillars have been appearing all over, and Montessori students have been capturing them and examining them and sharing them.
I found a very nice field guide to caterpillars at our beloved public library, and brought it in. It is on the classroom Library Books shelf. Also, I have offered Observation Sheets to those who want to make a record of what they found. The idea is that when you fill out a sheet like this (answering a few boilerplate questions, making a sketch from nature, and composing comments or observations of your own), you sharpen your observation skills.





There are more observation sheets over near the microscope, where we have a batch of snail eggs quietly developing in a jar of water. You could in theory fill out a new sheet every couple of days, as these eggs will look different every time you come back to them. Snail eggs are completely transparent and you can see the embryonic snail as it develops from a simple yellow dot to a comma to a squiggly thing to an actual snail.