Adventures with Caterpillars and Mini Field Trips

I'm taking Math for Elementary Education this quarter to fulfill some academic breadth requirements, and what is fabulous about that is that I not only get to create pictographs (!) but I get to volunteer more time in classrooms for the service-learning component of the class. Last week, I was busy helping out in an elementary classroom, and we were moving tiny Caterpillars to little containers that held this rancid smelling plant paste (that I'm sure the little critters are just devouring). I was helping out each student to very carefully take the caterpillars from the big container to the smaller ones, trying to make sure those escape artists didn't succeed at getting out of the big container, and listening to the questions from the students. They had so many good questions! Are the caterpillars girls or boys? I had no idea. We researched the answer together and found out that the only way to tell is to dissect them. So now I'm referring to the caterpillars as "they" or "them" in an attempt to avoid pronouns, and of course to avoid dissecting them. One was accidentally flicked across the room, and crawling on hands and knees I found them. That one is now designated as mine, and their name is Harry Houdini.
There is a lot of collaboration that goes on in the time between classes or during recess. I was surprised by how much of what we talk about in our classes is also talked about in this particular school. It's encouraging! We were talking a little about inquiry-based projects and about how great the caterpillars have been, and how excited the students are to work with them. Some students had never seen a caterpillar before this, except for maybe in a book or on TV. I was reading a book with a few students that had a character who is a blue jay, and no one knew what a blue jay was. That may have been due to young age, though. We (teachers, teacher's aids, and I) started talking about the great resource that this school had right outside, and how they could do an inquiry-based pseudo field trip outside where they get to explore the natural environment outside. Maybe a scavenger hunt of the plants, animals, and insects? A teacher and I actually went and took a walk out to explore what was out there. We're thinking maybe field journals using specific terminology, researching native and invasive plant species, insects and birds. There is quite a bit of potential there for experiential learning grounded on concrete experience from right outside the classroom.
An article I'm reading for another class pointed out that "today's children lack experience with natural ecosystem complexity. In all, 83% of the U.S. population lives in metropolitan areas." (Blair, D. 2009) I think that statement is pretty fair, but I'm sure there are some exceptions. The data the article cites is from the US Dept. of Agriculture. All in all I'm encouraged that discussions like the one I was participating in at a real school are happening and that teachers are creatively collaborating, even when they're only given 5 minutes.