Why oh why must tarantula's be part of a pre-schooler science class?

My girls have been taking science classes for almost a year now (they start them at 3 y.o.), and the topics have varied from kinetics to classification of vertebrates to the Rainforest, and everywhere in between. One of the classes they're currently attending relates to the diet of the zoo animals. They get to prepare the food (for some, not all), and feed many of the animals (depends on safety, etc.) This weeks subject was carnivores. They like to bring animals in as much as possible, and since bringing in one of the jaguars or a shark was not feasible they selected a snake and a tarantula. Yes. A taruatula. If you know me, you know that this is one of the few things that I am deathly afraid of, and yet there it was. I couldn't show fear as I don't want to pass this on to my daughters, but it was really tough when the teacher TOOK THE TARANTULA OUT OF IT'S HOUSE AND LET THE KIDS PET IT! Lucky for me, the girls were so excited by seeing and touching the tarantula that they didn't notice me quietly backing up to the other side of the room. Had it come anywhere near me I'm afraid the zoo would be looking for a new one.

Egg toss

Today the girls had to figure out how to protect eggs so that when they were fired from a catapult they wouldn't break. They were presented with a table that had some styrofoam type stuff, foam trays (like those from meat in the supermarket), felt, tissue paper, toilet paper rolls, cups from egg cartons, tape, string, and plastic. The girls picked all their own materials, decided how to "wrap" them, and only had me help with the holding and taping when they needed an extra hand.

After their creations were complete, we headed out to the park where they had the catapult set up, and each child got to place their creation in the catapult, then stand back and watch it fly. I was pretty impressed by all of the kids creations. Out of 8 kids, only 3 eggs broke. Pretty good for 3 to 5 year olds if you ask me.

After launching them several times, we opened them up and took out the eggs. Then the kids had a choice of taking the egg home for their parent to cook, giving the egg back to the zoo so they could use it to feed the animals, or launching it again without any protection so they could see it explode. One of my kids chose to launch the unprotected egg while the other offered to give hers back to the zoo for the animals. Can you guess which was which?

Science class

Today the girls had another installment of science class. They talked about eggs, and to the girls great delight they got to smash them, mix them, seperate them, all while trying to identify the different parts. At the end of class they got to make scrambled eggs that they could eat. That kind of creeped me out. I was always taught (and thought why does this need to be said) that you don't eat anything in science class. God knows what's growing in there. The girls enjoyed it though. At the end of the series they get to do the famous egg drop experiment where they each have to build something to put their eggs in so they don't break when dropped off the roof.