The Apple Snail's First Day of School

Teacher's Pet

 

 

 The first day back to school is tomorrow, August 20, 2012. This year starts a brand new program: Visual Literacy - Approach to Science Education in the Elementary School through Art Elements and Principles. 

Wow. That's a mouthful for any gastropod. To shorten it for the little teeth in a Kindergartner, I refer to this program as "Science Art". It's in the Science Lab rather than the Art Lab but only because that's where I landed this year. Curiosity can be investigating anywhere on Earth....or even on Mars as proven by our summer successful landing of a space probe.

Starting off this year are the most gigantic fresh water snail: the Apple Snail. They are native to many tropical and subtropical regions on earth. The ones I collected by the hundreds are from a south Floridian agricultural farm.

Mixed in with the young Apple Snails are shells of mollusks that are over 10,000 years old....these are blanched white and very hardened. These shells got dug up from lower soil levels. They were young and fresh during the last Ice Age (I think...I could do more homework on that)...when this part of Florida was part of a shallow sea bed. Some of the elder mollusks are the same as those I pick up on the seashore. These elder mollusks are salt water varieties and that's different from the Apple Snail shells which are fresh water only.

After a long summer break where most children did not need to wake early to think about things, my Apple Snail shells will open their minds wide...like the tuba-like opening of the giant shells.

Children's drawings and reactions will fill following blogs on this topic.


Meanwhile, look at these links:
 

http://fl.biology.usgs.gov/sofla/apple_snail.pdf

http://www.applesnail.net/