Nature Study --Observation of a Slug

Many of you know that I love gardening. I even have a blog dedicated to gardening.

In Anna Botsford Comstock's HANDBOOK OF NATURE STUDY, she discusses "Gardening and Nature Study" in her introductory section. She says that many people erroneously assume that just because they garden, their children are involved in nature study. This is not necessarily so, she argues. Even though gardening is a wonderful and healthy activity for a child, it must be purposely made into a nature study to become one.

She offers many suggestions for making a garden into a nature study for a child. One of these suggestions is to find out "what all these uninvited guests are doing" (page 20.) She advises us to not make the object of study into an item to be destroyed. On page 13, she gives the example of the cabbage butterfly. The child should be allowed to study the life cycle of the butterfly and be awed by this without any pressure that "this is a pest to be destroyed." If later, the child is focused on gardening, we can discuss how the cabbage butterfly is an enemy to the cabbage. The child's focus is on the cabbage at that point, and the child can easily accept the situation.

With these things in mind, we have spent a couple of days studying slugs in our yard. We are not studying them in connection with my garden (in which case they would be the enemy.)

I read pages 417 to 422 in HANDBOOK OF NATURE STUDY to myself. We brought a slug into the house once before I read the passage and then again after I had read it.

The children observed how slimy the slug is. They were very interested in how it moved and how it could stay on the side of a milk jug.

My son's drawing of the slug after observing it the first time. 

My daughter working on her drawing after the first observation. 

My youngest (2 years old) studying the slug on our milk jug (which
I use to take the compost outside.) 

After reading the article, I showed them the two sets of "horns." One contains his eyes at the end of these stalks. The smaller and lower ones contain his feeling organs to determine the nature of the things he is trying to crawl on. We spent some time putting our fingers in front of his eye horns and feeler horns to watch them get sucked into the body.

We observed the slug's breathing apparatus on one side of his body. We tried to get him to eat some apple, but were generally unsuccessful with this.

All in all, my children were totally engrossed in this study. They spent a great deal of watching this little slug.

Trying to get the slug to eat an apple. 

Barb, at the Handbook of Nature Study, has many suggestions for making nature study a part of your life. This month, she has suggested studying robins, the renewal that spring brings, and buds and catkins.  These are all studies that I want to do, but this slug study is the one my kids have been interested in right now.