Little Learners: Mealworms!!!

This lesson is for a 1st Grade Classroom but can easily be done for Kindergarten or made harder for a 2nd or 3rd Grade Classroom

Okay so for one of my classes, I have to go into a classroom and teach science lessons. My first lesson is all about mealworms and how they mature. So before the lesson even started, I went to my local pet store and bought a meal worm for each student. They were super cheap (28 for $1.15) so it is a lesson you can do time and time again. I also bought little cups (make sure they come with lids or else they WILL escape once the mealworms turn into beetles), wheat bran (generic bran works fine), and one potato.

To introduce the mealworms, I kept them a secret. This increased the time of the lesson (helps if one of your previous lessons ran shorter than you thought it would) and also increased the excitement of the students. I asked them science inquiry questions such as:
-What do you think these are?
-What do you think they do?
After I introduce them, I ask them what they think they eat, drink, where they are found, and any question that they wouldn't know the answer to (this helps them think of multiple answers, even if they aren't right or reasonable!)

Then I have them go back to their tables and each table gets a cup with a small amount of wheat bran, a small chunk of the potato, and a mealworm per child. I then had them draw what they saw.
***If you are doing this for an older classroom, have them write a sentence or two describing what they saw and/or drew***

Once they have had about 10-15 minutes to draw, I had them come back and hypothesize what they will turn into.

I then put two of the six cups of mealworms by the window, two on the counter out of the sun but in the light, and two in a dark and quiet closet.

Let the students look at the mealworms each day or quietly feed them. Make sure to give them a new piece of potato each day or every other day. When you notice a change (be sure to look each day so your students will get to see them!) Here are the mealworms in the 2nd week of observation.

This is the counter ones. The mealworms by the window are mostly dead (fried actually), and and the ones in the closet are mostly the same as the counter.