Later the work went into their portfolio under the science section. We raise crickets in my classroom. We have had many generations in the last two years. I let the children observe them in their habitat all year long. Then I begin my questions during our study of the insects to see what they have observed.
Children are very perceptive.
I read The Very Quiet Cricket and hopefully we have babies at the time and we talk about which crickets are chirping and which are not. We make a cricket from construction paper and tissue paper paying close attention to the characteristics of crickets and insects. We talk about which are female and male. They finally discover the only chirping crickets are male. After reading The Very Quiet Cricket to my class of pre-kindergartners we try to imagine what the male cricket was saying to the female cricket or what he may want to say to some of the other insects in the story.