Extensions Have students design their own experiments from their questions. Often times, a pet store will have dead crickets or a classroom cricket may die of natural causes. These can be used as specimens to let the students get a close look at an insect (use hand lens or microscope). Assign each team a particular insect or human sense organ. Each group illustrates how their assigned insect or human sense organ helps that animal to live and survive. Have each group share their illustrations with the class before they are displayed. Have the students write stories with the title "Walking on Ears." Words with Special Meanings (for understanding only, not to be tested) Antenna (plural antennae): a pair of appendages on the head of an insect used as sensory organs. Cerci: two long appendages at the end of the abdomen that contain on the surface tiny hairs that respond to touch or air movement. Both male and female crickets have them. Females, however, have a long ovipositor (see diagram). Communicate: to make known. Hypothesis (hypotheses, plural): a tentative explanation for a question that can be tested using experimentation. Observe: to look at and pay special attention to what something does, what it looks like, and how it changes. Palps: finger-like structures on the insect's mouth that help them handle and hold food, but also contain taste bud-like receptors that are for tasting food. Predict: to guess what you believe will happen. Survive: to stay alive. Tympanum: sense organ, like human eardrum, but in crickets located on their front legs (see diagram). Tibia: section of insect leg before foot; tympana located on it. Bibliography Aliki. My Five Senses. New York: Thomas Crowell Co., 1962. Bashful Bard. Cricket Gets the Monster: Fears and Feelings. Topeka, KS: Kenney Publications Bashful Bard. Cricket Loses his Shadow. Topeka, KS: Kenney Publications Carle, Eric. A Very Quiet Cricket. New York: Philomel Books, 1990 Caudill, Rebecca. A Pocketful of Cricket. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1964 Fisher, Aileen. A Cricket in the Thicket. New York: Scribner and Sons, 1963 Hoberman, MaryAnn. Bugs. New York: Viking Press, 1976 Hogner, Dorothy Childs. Grasshoppers and Crickets. New York: Thomas Crowell Co. 1960 Howe, James. I Wish I Were a Butterfly. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1987 Kidder, Barbara. Mr. Wonderful. Los Angeles: Denison, 1964 Jiminy Cricket. New York: Walt Disney. Levine, Gloria. Cricket in Times Square: A Study Guide. LRN Links, 1987 Mizumura, Kazue. If I Were a Cricket.... New York: Thomas Crowell, 1973 Porter, Keith. Discovering Grasshoppers and Crickets. New York: The Bookwrights Press, 1986 Selden, George. Chester Cricket's Pigeon Ride. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. ,1981 Selden, George. The Cricket in Times Square. New York: Ariel Books, 1960 Selden, George. Cricket in Times Square. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1970 Simon, Seymour. Discovering What Crickets Do. New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1973 Stevens, Carla. Catch A Cricket. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1961 Watts, Barrie. Grasshoppers and Crickets - Keeping Minibeasts. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1991 Wayland Publishing. Grasshoppers and Crickets. East Sussex, UK: Wayland Publishing Ltd., 1979 Wood, Don and Audrey Wood. Quick as a Cricket. New York: Child's Play International, Inc., 1982 Wolf, Allan. Something is Going to Happen: Poetry Performance for the Classroom. Asheville, NC: Iambic Publications, 1990

Center for Insect Science Education Outreach The University of Arizona Contact:CISEO http://insected.arizona.edu All contents copyright © 1997. All rights reserved.