Extra Blog Post - Hermit Crab Update

Hello families, 

I had to post an extra blog this week as we had an exciting discovery this morning! I noticed that our hermit crabs have been hiding out in their "coco hut" quite a lot. This morning I found the two larger hermit crabs outside of the hut, and what I believed to be a dead hermit crab torn apart inside the hut. I do not do well with these things, so Ms. Kassam came to my rescue and helped me dispose of the body. We checked all of the extra shells to make sure it didn't just find a new home - but did not see any signs of the third hermit crab. 

I had a talk with the students about how the hermit crab had died and during work period we discovered that the little hermit crab had actually moved to a new shell (even though both Ms. Kassam and I did not see it.) So, I quickly went to fish the "dead body" out of the garbage - this is the crab's exoskeleton. In order to grow, they shed their exoskeleton and move into a larger shell. We were all very excited to learn that the hermit crab had molted and not died. We learned that the crabs actually eat their exoskeletons as they are a good source of calcium. So, in the end, all is well with all three hermit crabs! The only mystery is that we cannot find the shell that the hermit crab used to live in.

Here is a photo of what was left of the exoskeleton - it can take up to 3 months for a hermit crab to molt. Because they are nocturnal, it can be hard to see the signs of molting. 


Here is a video of the hermit crab in his new shell! (with a little bit of commentary!)



We also watched this video that shows how a hermit crab can move from one shell to another. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

September 5-8

Image
Hello families,   We made it through our first (almost) full week of school! We are focusing a lot on learning expectations and building classroom community. We’ve been enjoying starting each day in circle getting to know our classmates.  The pictures will be a little limited for the first few weeks until we have photo release information!  This week we talked a lot about carpet expectations. We read a story called “Whole-Body Listening at School” and learned about Listening Larry. Ask your child how many parts of our body we can listen with… it’s not just our ears. You can also follow up with “Whole Body Listening at Home” if this is something you are working on at home as well! I also like to use my cat, Eli, to show carpet expectations!   Whole Body Listening at Home This week we started some introduction lessons to the UFLI literacy program. We’ve been learning how our mouth moves in different ways to make different sounds. We also started learning about “sky, grass, dirt” letters
Read more

December 11-15

Image
Hello families,  We had a very busy week getting ready for our winter concert and our Calgary Humane Society fundraiser! Students love baking and packaging treats, making posters, and some students were even challenged to learn how to curl the ribbon! On Friday we used our skip counting skills to count up all the money we've raised so far. We've raised $666.85 and are hoping to break our record of $700 from last year! All of this work is connected to our health and wellness curriculum (volunteerism), social studies, science, art, math and literacy! Wow! Math In math we've been continuing to work with number bonds. This week students learned how to determine the missing number in a number bond when given the whole and one of the parts. This is a pre-cursor to subtraction! We used manipulatives and drawings to help us with this work!  We also re-invented our Spider Legs math game to make it Christmas themed! Instead of drawing a spider and adding legs, students used a tree an
Read more

First Days

Image
Hello families!  We had a great first week of school! I have a goal this year to be a little more concise with my blog posts. We'll see how it goes!  This week we spent some time getting to know each other. We learned about sharing circles and have started both mornings in circle getting to know more about one another. We are learning the importance of listening to each other and giving everyone a chance to speak.  We also read the story "You're Finally Here" by Melanie Watt. We enjoyed re-creating the main character of the story. It was great to see students' cutting skills and their ability to follow each step of the activity. We talked about how the eyebrows can convey different feelings and can really change the bunny's expression.  On Friday we learned a math game called "What's My Number?" we played teacher versus students and they beat me! Next week, students will play the game with their classmates.  Fun Lunch School Council organizes Hea
Read more