Snails & 6th grade science

Okay, so we have had class snails for the past 2 weeks. They stink, they poop, they eat carrots and lettuce and chalk. And depending on what they choose to eat, their poop matches the color of the food. We are finished with our snail unit - finally and are beginning our hissing cocharoach unit- Monday. They will be coming straight from Madagascar. Well, they are Madagascar Cocharoaches...they come from the RISD science center. ANYWAYS.... I have had interesting conversations with my class this past week in regards to our snails.
1. Did you know that snails are both she/he's. 6th graders find this VERY strange and started out calling them "it's" until they learned that they were he/she's. AND then....we read our textbook which gave the real vocab word for a he/she. Anybody ever write this word on a triple venn diagram on the overhead....

HERMAPHRODITE?!?!?! o...m....g. THANK GOODNESS that they are just immature enough not to know what this is.

2. ? - Mrs. K, how do snails' make babies? You have your textbook, let's research it.... they look it up and write it down. A few days go by and we are discussing why we put chalk in their classroom habitat, and I call on one student who says...
"they eat chalk to make their calcium love darts." THis is true and this is how they make babies. They make calcium love darts. calcium love darts. let me say it again. calcium love darts.
sigh. Having this discussion with hormonal girls and hormone driven boys is SOOO not what I signed up for.
Three things I learned about myself and snails.
1. I will never again eat escargot and 2. I will never pour salt all over them like i did when I was little. and 3. Snails are creepy.