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Crawdads nature study
Back on Memorial Day Jeff was mowing the lawn. It had grown ridiculously high because our lawnmower was broken. While mowing he found: a turtle, a frog, and 3 crawdads.
I was out shopping and came home to this on my back porch. I filled the tub with water and told the kids to collect some grass clippings.
Once we added some water the little guy happily wandered around in the grass filled water. We watched him move around and discovered how he was moving all sorts of things.
They really enjoyed studying him, though I have to admit their favorite part of it was scaring their aunt with the crawdad.
So, we had a mystery, how did we get crawdads in our dry backyard? We had several different theories:
- It had rained here recently, maybe it was from the rain?
- There’s a pond about a half mile or so away, could they have wandered all this way?
- Somebody threw them in the yard? This was said mainly as a joke.
The mystery was finally solved a couple of days ago (a whole month later), our new neighbor was planning on having a Crawdad boil, and they had laid them out to purify them or something. While that was happening a big gust of wind blew the bowl and table over, and knocked the crawdads all over. They thought they’d found them all, but apparently 3 of them got into our yard, 2 houses away……..
We still had the problem of what to do with the live crawdad, and eventually we decided to let him go in at the park we’ve been studying.
Of course first we had to write a few things about our guest
We discovered the crawdad did not like the current of the creek, but it loved the muck and mud of the swampy area next to it. It immediately tried to bury itself in the mud, and climbed all over area. It was fascinating to watch.
Then we took the two dead crawdads down to the nature center, and they talked about them for 30 minutes with the lady. We discovered they were male crawdads, which once she said that the boys were able to identify the large claw as the giveaway, and explained why they have that (to get the girls). We got to see the gills, and all sorts of things.
This would be a great example of a using outside teachers.
Applying this to your homeschool:
- Be willing to study the weird things you find. Those have been some of our most memorable finds.
- Keep your old science books. We were able to look at our Swimming Creatures book and learn more about the crawdads.
- Know safety procedures for dealing with wild animals in your area. Are things poisonous? Can you touch them? These obviously are not poisonous, but they do have germs. We discussed a lot about washing our hands.
- Know when to get outside help. We headed to the nature center to find out more information, and she gave us a lot.
<div align="center"><a href="https://ticiamessing.com/category/science-sunday/" title="Science Sunday"><img src="https://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g344/Ticia1/AiMScienceSundaycopy.jpg" alt="Science Sunday" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
Now link up your SCIENCE posts for the week, and then visit some of the other posts linked up and say hi. I’m going to be pinning, commenting, FBing or tweeting all of the posts linked up as the week goes by.
Comments
16 responses to “Crawdads nature study”
I love this post. It is a wonderful nature study/mystery story. We don’t have crawdads here in Maryland -just about every other seafood, but not crawdads.
They seem to be a decidedly Southern thing. Now, you’ve got me curious what seafood is local here.
They call them crayfish here, and if you tell people you eat them, they start gagging 🙂 Great homeschool tips – very true!
So funny story, we were at the grocery store the same day we found them, and there was a giant sign saying “live crawdads on sale every Sunday,” my kids looked at that and said “We can sell our crawdads to them.” I didn’t quite know what to say to that.
I was going to write that I didn’t have a clue what crawdads were but then I saw the message above. Yup, we have crayfish over here! Can I just say ‘yuck’? They spook me. I can handle spiders and all number of insects but crustaceans …brr, they send shivers up my spine!
That’s funny. For me it’s any and all variations of scorpions, they’re unnatural.
How fascinating. I only saw crayfish in the stores, safely “prepared”. Good thing you found a place for a survivor of this ordeal, and the kids will certainly not forget this learning experience.
I know, I was really wondering what we’d do. The turtle was bad enough, but eventually wandered away, but the crawdad, I didn’t know how we’d rescue it originally.
What a crazy story on how they got in the yard! You guys learned a ton about Crawdads! I know from the same type of observing that if you put two mails in a small container they will usually fight each other.. We found this out when camping one year!
What an awesome study and it’s extra neat that you solved the mystery of how they got into your yard.
I know, that to me was one of the coolest parts of all.
What a cool find! I love that you found outside experts to learn more.
Me too, that was one of the kids favorite parts. I think that “museum” is the best kept secret in Austin.
Oh my word – that thing looks like an alien! A very cool alien at that. Loved this story, especially the mystery of how they got to your lawn. And superb natural learning.
Aha now I know what they are in British English – crayfish. They seem less exotic now (but still cool).
Yes, there are so many names for them, I’ve always known them as crawdads, but I’ve seen crayfish, crawfish, mud something, mud dabbers? Maybe. There’s lots.
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