Project Silkworm Part I

A cotton T-shirt is woven from cotton picked from a cotton plant.  But where does silk come from to make a silk blouse or silk tie?  It comes from a silkworm!  Second grade classes raised silkworms as part of their Life Science unit.

Jefferson is one of the few schools that has raised silkworms successfully.  Silkworms eat only mulberry leaves, so we planted two mulberry trees years ago in the Kindergarten yard.

In April, second graders hatched the silkworms from tiny eggs, and this video shows the silkworms six weeks later in their larva stage.

Coming Up Next:  The silkworms eat and eat until they get fat enough to build a cocoon around themselves with their own silk.