The cost of a supply of silkworms, a small habitat, food, and books about silkworms (from Barnes and Noble and Carolina Biological Supply Company) is $323, including shipping and <a target="new" href="http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm" onclick="g_openWindow('http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm', 300, 800, 'fulfillwindow');return false;">fulfillment</a>.
I've been reading Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach to my first-grade class, and they love it. One of the more mysterious characters in the novel is a silkworm. My students were especially curious about silkworms, and--not having any related books on hand in our school library--we turned to the internet to learn more about them. We were all surprised to find that, contrary to what we'd read in the novel, silkworms do not "spin" silk in the way that spiders spin a web. The silk harvested from silkworms is actually their cocoons, unravelled.
My students are dying to bring silkworms into the classroom. There is a mulberry tree not far from our school, so we'd be able to provide the worms with some real food. With your help, we would order a supply of worms, a small habitat for them, some artificial food--just in case the mulberry tree is off limits--and some non-fiction children's books about silkworms.
We will document the metamorphosis of the worms using students' drawings and my digital camera. This project would likely include several writing opportunities for the kids, as well as an art project involving any raw silk that we might be able to harvest.
I currently have 18 students in my classroom. We are a public school, and the majority of our students come from low-income families.
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