As any good mother would do I began to inquire with the other mothers. I soon found out yes, it is true, they are purchased at the little local stores....one yuan for 20 worms (that is roughly .15 cents for 20 worms). As soon as I inquired about the worms I had offers abounding from the other moms! "I'll give you some!" (I should have taken this as a hint.) I agreed to their generosity... (hey, I'm all about saving .15 cents when I can).
The next morning the other Mom handed over the little box of worms (quite eagerly I might add.) Mind you, I had agreed with Sugar and Spice to allow 6 worms in the house, bargained down from 8 (I tried 7 but 7 is not evenly divisble between two little girls.) To my utter surprise there were 23 worms!! 23!! (Again, should have been a warning sign to me, but I took them home.)
I found two little cardboard homes and placed everything on the coffee table for my girls to discover once they returned from school. They were delighted! They didn't even mind that 23 is not evenly divisble by 2! They diveyed them up. Sugar got 12 and Spice got 11.
Some of the information about silk worms I had gathered from the other Moms was that there is no worry of the worms getting out of the box, they, in my estimation are quite lazy worms. They will not go looking for their food, you must put it directly in front of them! And once they become moths they will not fly from the box either. See what I mean? Lazy worms. But I was glad to hear it. My only concern was infestation of my home by worms or cloth eating moths. I was assured neither would happen.
Next issue...what do they eat? Mulberry leaves. Okay, what's a Mulberry tree look like? Where do I find one? No problem, one Mom volunteered to bring some leaves from her neighborhood. Little did we know how much these lazy worms can eat!! I felt it was too much of an inconvenience to keep asking my friend to bring bags of Mulberry leaves to school to sustain these ravenous creatures! So we spent 3 hours going around our neighboring village one Saturday afternoon asking, through interpretation, "Where can we find a Mulberry tree?" We asked everyone....we asked young and old. We asked school age children, surely they would know because they were probably raising Silk Worms too! No luck! No leaves. I went back to requesting leaves from my friend every couple of days. We kept the leaves in the refrigerator to keep them fresh.
Once the worms began to spin a cocoon we made individual compartments in their boxes. They like to connect their cocoon to a corner. One morning the girls brought up the subject of what happens after the moths emerge from their cocoons. Apparently the moths come out, look around their box for a mate, and then lay eggs. The girls had grand plans for this; they intended to hatch the eggs and sell baby silk worms! 20 for 1 yuan!! Clearly I had not thought this through enough when I agreed to let them in the house! A slight panic set in. I quickly responded, "Girls it's been a great experience but I did not do this to embark on a Silk Worm business!"
After the entire experience and the moths had layed all their eggs I made the necessary arrangements to "end the life cycle" of the silk worm business. (I took the boxes to the trash can outside.)
All in all it was a great experience, one we would never have had if we were not "here".
The girls each wrote a report for you on what they learned about Silk Worms. Here they are for your enjoyment.....
"SPICE'S REPORT" age 9
'SILK WORMS'
I will be telling you about silk worms. Silk worms are very like worms but they turn into moths! First you have to put them in a box that has no top. But I want to tell you something else, silk worms only eat mulberry leaves. The mulberry leaves are shaped like spades and clubs. Some of them have little bugs but you don't have to take the bugs off, it wont hurt them anyways! When you give them the mulberry leaves make sure there are no drops of water on the leaves because it is not good for them they might get sick and die because of the water.
The silk worm is an inch and half long and thin as a pencil. When they are ready to turn into moths they build a cocoon and they are in the cocoon for at least four days. But before they do that they might die for some reason. I never knew why they died.
Lets get back to them turning to moths. When they turn to moths they have to get their
wings spread out before they can flap there wings. But I will tell you they cannot fly
when they turn into moths.
When the moths are out they can lay their eggs all by themselves or they can lay their eggs with a boy. But be careful when you get some... you are going to have 1.000,000 of them when they get together! So before you see the eggs, sell as much as you can! Or if you want you can buy just a boy or a girl and then you wont have so much silk worms.
"SUGAR'S REPORT" age 10
"SILK WORMS'
Hello, I got some silkworms. What are silkworms? Well, I will tell you.
One day my little sister and I came home from school. It was a normal day, but not when
we walked in the door... We looked at the coffee table and there were our
silkworms! We were so excited.
At first they looked like plain caterpillars but they are not furry. They are white and some have black stripes. Silkworms eat Mulberry leaves. Mulberry leaves are green and some are shaped like a small Maple leaf. (But green of coures.) They were cute eating their leaves. A lot of kids at my school had silkworms at this time of year. So Mulberry leaves were getting scarse but our friends brought us leaves until they started building their cocoons. Our friends saved the day!
This is how Silkworms start a cocoon: first they find a spot to start connecting their threads. Once you notice them start to do that you have to put them in a small card board box.
They each need their own room. 
A cool fact about Silkworms: Silkworm cocoons come in different colors white, yellow, orange, and pink. (My mom really wanted to have a pink one but we only had 2 white ones and the rest were orange and yellow)
Once the Silkworm is done forming in its cocoon it comes out as a beautiful white moth. Their wings are small and shriveled up when they first come out. Then their wings smooth out and become normal. Then they mate and the girl moth lays her eggs. When she first lays her eggs the eggs are yellow, then after about a half hour they turn brown, then another half hour later they turn black.
Silkworms are one of God's creatures. And I'm glad that I got to experience them!
If you look closely you can see a few eggs just above the moth on the cardboard.
No comments:
Post a Comment