cute little isopods
Isopods or affectionately known as ‘roly-pollies’ (or pill bugs) are a lot of fun to study. Pebbles enjoyed her time studying and playing with them in her R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey – Life labs. We searched all over our garden for them and just couldn’t find any so we ended up buying them online at www.bugsincyberspace.com (isn’t that the greatest website name?!)
They even have live bug videos!!
We got 15 of them for $8 – but $9 added for shipping. The little fellas arrived happily in their moist soil in a cup within a few days.
What can you do with isopods?
- Do they prefer hot or cold? Shady or sunny? Rough or smooth?
- Watching them crawl very quickly up sticks
- Watch them roll up into neat little balls
- Feed them greens, potato, sliced apples or carrots, dog food
- learn why they are crustaceans and not insects
- write poems about them
- display them for an interactive science fair project
- have isopod races into the moist shady paper towels
- watch them molt and look at their discarded shells up close with a magnifying glass
- learn if they molt in one piece or in stages
- compare the size of the youngsters with the older ones
- find out if they are good for a garden – or if they are pests?
- count their legs and other body parts
- google giant isopods online and have bad dreams later
- watch youtube videos about them
- find out what the differences are between isopods and sowbugs
- scare your siblings
She didn’t intend to do a science fair project on isopods, but since they were alive and thriving…. it became her topic. The kids enjoyed looking at them for sure.
They were so easy to care for we kept them for a long time after the experiments were through – they had babies and shed lots of exoskeletons as they grew. Eventually we released them into our garden after we were surprised to discover some already living in our lemon tree soil – funny how we couldn’t find them until we paid $17 for them! I’ll tell you this….. in the end we had WAY more than we had bought!
We look forward to studying them again when BamBam does Life Science next! Great fun for everyone.
pill bug
strong, fast
crawling, climbing, popping
he is round and cute
isopod
