Eating Insects for Earth Day

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

Today I checked one thing off my bucket list by snacking on an ant lollipop. Many thanks to the family who donated it to our classroom!

Here's the TED talk I like to use for this: Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects?

I've been interested in eating insects ever since we began to learn about it for Earth Day back in April 2012. Insects are a very healthy, humane, and inexpensive source of protein. Eating insects for protein has been common throughout the span of human history.

I well remember my daughter Leah's poster that showed two bright red circle graphs of how many people around the world eat insects compared to the United States. Sadly I don't have a picture. Everyone else is doing it... why aren't you?

The children have been working on their Personal Narrative pieces all month alongside our Local Industry topic. Persuasive writing is quite another thing, and we don't do much with it before grade 8 (developmentally, you have to be ready to do Persuasive Essays).

But I thought they would -- like Leah -- enjoy doing a poster project.

So much more fun than "persuade your parents to give you a later bedtime." I remember being given this prompt in elementary school and hating it because it wasn't authentic. There was no way. My bedtime was set in stone!

Can you persuade your parents to eat insects?

(Not into ants? If cicadas are your thing, try ‘CICADA-LICIOUS’ COOKING.)