Science for Preschoolers - Roly Poly

I have so many potato bugs in my garden, I decided to have some fun with them. Yesterday evening I collected as many as I could and placed them in a box with a perforated lid, then added dirt and some cucumber slices.

I found some really cool facts about potato bugs known as roly poly (they are also called pill bugs, wood louse, armadillo bug): they are crustaceans, they breath through their gills, they molt when they grow, roly poly momthers carry thier eggs in a pouch, they curl into a ball when they are scared, they eat their own poop (to get copper), they turn blue when they are sick and their blood is blue.

The kids made a choice chamber for the bugs by adding a wet paper to one side of a petri dish.

Then they dug through the dirt to find roly polys and place them in the chamber. They were delighted to see how the bugs prefer the wet paper side of the dish. The kids just kept looking for more roly polys for their dish. We then added cucumber slices and water melon to the dish as food for the bugs.

We also made a paper roly polys that they decoated.