If you want to interest your kids in plants and gardening, how about starting with a meat eater? 🦖 🙂
Many gardening stores sell plants that eat meat, or at least protein from insects. They belong to a Family called Droseraceae in Latin. They come in around 100 varieties and live all over the world. Some of them catch their prey with sticky liquids at the ends of hair-like tentacles and others are shaped like baseball mitts that close in a split second when an insect touch almost microscopic feelers on the insides of their spiky leaves.
After a week or so the plants have sucked all protein out of the insect. Then it opens up again ready to start over.
Do you have any animal eating plants?
The plant in the photos is a Venus Fly Trap, Dionaea Muscipula.