March of the Caterpillars

This morning when I dropped Ted for his morning at Playschool I noticed that the fence was covered in caterpillars, thousands and thousands of them! Ted was fascinated and said what he always says when he spots a minibeast: 'arm!' This means that I have to catch whatever ladybird, bug, ant, or whatever it might be, and put it onto his arm which always makes him giggle! Anyway, he enjoyed having one crawl around his hand for a few minutes before he got distracted by the toy diggers in the Playschool garden, and he was off.

The primary school teacher in me really hopes that the Playschool staff threw aside their planning for the day and did lots of spontaneous caterpillar themed activities... But I know that's not always the way schools and nurseries work any more. Shame. We'll be reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar tonight anyway. I did think of collecting a few so we could keep them and watch them pupate, but they were all on the fence so I couldn't identify their food, so the poor things would probably have died of starvation if I'd taken them home with me. We'll do that some day though.