• To explore the idea of change through observation of an insect life cycle.

• To investigate how children think about the process of food "becoming" the organism (or, To investigate how children think about the digestive cycle of an organism?)

• To look at how children think about food can contribute to an organism's physical transformations (development)

Later in our unit, we presented the students with the question "How does the milkweed leaf become caterpillar?". At this point, the students had already engaged in many discussions about the caterpillar's eating patterns. They speculated about whether caterpillars eat and digest food the same way humans do. This anthropomorphizing appeared in later discussions, serving as a pathway for children to discuss ideas that were abstract and beyond their reach.

• Lesson One: Transformation

• Summary

Children tend to anthropomorphise observations about living creatures. This can sometimes impede their ability to truly "see" what is happening with an organism. It can also serve a positive purpose in that it opens the doors of conversation for all children because it helps to level the "domain knowledge playing field." Children experience eating and growing. They have some idea that there are mechanisms at play that make growing possible. They mapped their experiences with their body changes onto the changes they observed with the caterpillars. They did note that the changes were fast compared to what you can observe in human beings. In other observation/discussion cycles, the children measured the length of the caterpillars. They were amazed at how fast they grew in length. They also noted times where it seemed that the caterpillars were eating a lot more than "normal." The children did not make the connection between volume of eating and caterpillar growth. This is not a surprise because opportunities were not structured to bring out this type of comparison. It would, however be an excellent direction to try in the future because it would likely help provide more background for conversations like "how does milkweed leaf become caterpillar?"