Beetle Inquiry

The beetles I brought into my room (along with the box of dung I found them in) has brought on a life of its own.

To recap:

• While digging in the pile of horse dung to use as fertilizer, I found a larvae. Knowing that my students would love it, I put it in a bucket and brought it back to the school.
• Later that day the high school students found another one.
• I borrowed an aquarium from the science teacher and filled it with the same stuff I found the larvae in (which I don't think he'll ever want back)
• I offered to let anyone who wanted one to have one, and half the class said they wanted one, so I went out to the pile and got a total of ten for the class.
• One girl said her dad raises beetles, so I told her to write me up some rules on how to take care of them (writing integrated!)
• A boy brought in a book on beetles in his native Japanese (Japanese language integrated!)
• The Kindergarten who are studying living things, and Grade 1-2 classes both came in to check them out.
• The students are hypothesizing on what they will turn into using their prior knowledge and that from books to make their guesses. (I am pretty sure they will turn into kabuto mushi or rhinoceros beetles - at least that's what the maintenance guy said they would become.)
• Today students that do not normally play together all gathered around to read about beetles.

I would like to incorporate a math problem in here somewhere, I am thinking something with volume involving dirt in the aquarium.

I don't know the first thing about these beetles and I have learned more in the past week than I ever wanted to know. I just wish that our current unit was focused on bugs. And I hope these things turn into beetles sometimes soon.