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| Image: Clkr.com Clip Art |
The 2012 Washington DC/Baltimore Cricket Crawl is tomorrow night, August 24th, starting at 8:15pm. In case you've never heard of it and are wondering why it should matter, it's an opportunity to help scientists determine and track the individual distribution of katydids and crickets as an important part of our collective environment and- something I'm sure we all take for granted- as an equally important part of the familiar and comforting nighttime ambiance.
According to their website, there are very few insects that make noise and even rarer are ones that make noises that we can hear. Yes, Friends, the insect world, inside of the rest of the natural world, is pretty amazing and I fully intend to impart some of this wonder (ie, shameless science geekiness) to my children.
This seems like such a great science (family!) activity that is easy to do and would be a nice addition to your portfolio! Plus, you'll be helping out scientists while learning about and actively tuning in to your ecosystem. **Bonus: Spending quality time as a family.**
I plan to participate and make a fun night of it for the kids. I'd like to extend it into a daytime science lesson and journal topic (documenting any experiments we do, something interesting they've learned, and what they did/enjoyed most about the Crawl itself) for the girls, as well insha'Allah. Also, I plan to try one or two of these craft ideas.
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| Cool Katydid |
It might be a good idea to study up ahead of time on the Washington DC/Baltimore Cricket Crawl website so you know what to do when it's time.
Oh boy, just remembered the expensive-to-purchase and hard-to-find batteries in our copy of Eric Carle's The Very Quiet Cricket need to be replaced; the little cricket's been extra-quiet lately. *sigh*
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