Reptile Observation

This week spent learning about our leopard gecko through reading and observation has been so fun! In the mornings, Aidyn's first thought is to check on "baby gecko." We peek into her terrarium and usually find her cuddled in her hollow log. The knowledge of her being nocturnal was fully realized this week as we often caught her napping and not doing much else. There have been late nights and early mornings when the glow of her purple nightlight exposed her nightly habits. She then ventures out of her safe spot and roams through her tiny desert. We once spied her right on top of her log looking like the queen of her world!

We also learned more about her eating habits. Initially we provided her with a scoop of mealworms but noticed that she barely touched them. Worried that she wasn't getting enough to eat, we revisited Petsmart for a professional opinion. The clerk filled us in on her usual diet, and a book from the library explained that pet store lizards may not recognize a certain food item as a meal if they didn't have it frequently enough. The case with the mealworms was that she only had them only occasionally. What she was used to was crickets. Yes. Live crickets! Live crickets dusted with calcium powder, I might add. Doesn't that sound fancy? So we picked up a carton of small, live crickets. Since adding two to her tank, she's gobbled up one already.

I'm sure we could have read all these things in a textbook and probably watched them on a documentary but something about experiencing this beautiful creature teaches us so much more. Some things that we've learned I cannot even put into words, but it runs the gamut from learning about lizards' idiosyncrasies to taking responsibility for caring for a pet. The root of that logic is why I adore homeschool; I want us to touch, see, feel, experience these things instead of only reading about it in a cold textbook. I'm sure we won't be able to do it all, but the things we do learn about with multi-module methods will surely stand out.