GRADE FIVE SCIENCE
Hello Boys and Girls, Your holidays are almost over. How prepared are you for school? Do ensure that you are well on the way to being ready. Your uniform(s) should be ready if you have to get new ones. All your exercise books and text books should be papered and labelled. Do you have your pencils, crayons, ruler and eraser? Having access to a good dictionary handy is always fine. I’m sure you are excited.
Last week we continued to examine insects. We saw that their body has three main paarts. The eyes, antennae (feelers) and mouth parts are on the head. Where can we find the wings and feet? Let’s look at the labelled diagram of the insect below. Look carefully at each part and the explanation. Try to find those parts on another insect. Draw and label an insect. Be sure to attach the parts correctly.
Do all insects have antennae? Do all insects have wings? Let’s look at the life cycle of the butterfly. What is meant by life cycle? Find out.
A life cycle is the series of changes that take place in the lifetime of an organism.
The female adult butterfly usually lays eggs on the underside of leaves. Each egg, after a few days, becomes a larva, called a caterpillar. You’ve seen many, haven’t you? At this stage the caterpillar feeds all the time. It is amazing to see how many leaves it eats in a short time.
Because it eats a lot it grows very quickly. It is often considered to be a garden pest because it destroys the leaves of many plants. Look around in your yard and check for evidence of caterpillars around.
When the caterpillar is fully grown it stops eating and hangs itself upside down from the leaf, or twig. The caterpillar has now become a pupa.
The pupa changes slowly into a butterfly. When it is fully grown it crawls out of its case, dries its wings, then flies away.
Try catching a caterpillar and feeding it with leaves from the same plant on which it was feeding. You can do it just as in the picture above.
Until next week, goodbye Boys and Girls