MAGIC VALLEY — A kindergarten class at the College of Southern Idaho, CSI, hopes to pass along the things they learned about Crawdads by displaying their work at CSI's Herritt Center for Arts and Science.
"This is all our crawdad stuff. We made it out of clay, sticks, and other stuff," Alexander Burt, one of the students involved in the project, said while pointing to his work at the museum.
Jodie Bridges, a kindergarten teacher at CSI, has been taking her class on regular nature walks, but after one particular walk, the students became enthralled with crawdads.
"We read books about them and asked questions and researched answers. So the kids were the researchers. They also liked creating crawfish, so they built them from everything you could think of, from clay, popsicle sticks, and paper and expressing the artistic side as well," Bridges said.
Apart from creating crawdads out of different materials, the students also wrote a book about the animals. The project started with their work being displayed in their classroom, but the more the students learned about crawdads, the more they wanted to teach others what they learned, leading Bridges to get their work displayed at the Herritt Center.
"With them being able to have it up at the Herrett museum, it has added that oh well, now other people can see it. It's given them a purpose behind what they can do to share what they learned with others," Bridges said.
Bridges says the students took the lead on this project while she provided some guidance.
The students say one of their favorite parts of the project was holding a crawdad, and some have even taken their families crawdad fishing.
"They loved holding them. It was just this whole excitement. It was just a magical moment, and they just became captivated with them asked all sorts of questions," Bridges said.
"We went to a canal with crawdads and got to hold some. We also have a crawdad at our school that is alive," Burt said.
Bridges says the project has been beneficial for students for many different reasons.
'It's been beneficial because it puts a purpose behind their learning. We wanted to share this with people," Bridges said.
The exhibit will be displayed at CSI's Herritt Center for Arts and Science until the end of January.
