As Australian Children’s Laureate, every month I post up a writing and drawing activity to keep kids’ imaginations strong on the Children’s Laureate Foundation website. March’s protagonist is the hermit crab. Here’s an amazing fact about these beautiful creatures. As they grow, hermit crabs need to find empty shells. With some species, when a crab finds a new empty shell it will leave its own shell and inspect the empty one. If the shell is too big, the crab goes back to its own shell and waits for up to 8 hours. More crabs arrive who also inspect the empty shell. If it’s too big for them they wait with the others. Up to 20 crabs could be waiting in the group. They hold onto each other in a line from the largest to the smallest crab. Then, when a crab arrives that’s just the right size for the empty shell, it leaves its old shell behind. That’s when all the crabs in the queue quickly exchange shells in order, each one moving up to the next size.

To find out about this month’s writing and drawing activity here’s the link https://www.childrenslaureate.org.au/