You also get people like me who are fiber geeks and can’t wait to use words like 蚕糸 in context.
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So I take it this is a British thing? Never heard of anyone farming silkworms where I grew up.
And maybe more the more relevant point… my girlfriend says she’s not aware of Japanese kids being particularly interested in silkworms. She’s never heard of anyone keeping them anyway.
You can’t really use 蚕 in a British primary school.
Nope not a british thing, rarely used the word silkworm in my life, i’m as confused as you are here. 
One of my Japanese friends mentioned his son brought home a silkworm from school for some kind of project.
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Okay, well that’s one.
My girlfriend is a native Japanese (grew up there) and is an elementary school teacher, so she’s surrounded by them all the time.
That’s where her perspective of “never really heard of Japanese kids being interested in them” is coming from.
Not trying to fight everyone. Go ahead and learn 蚕 if you want.
Because it makes silk!
(and if you feed it beetroot leave it makes red silk)
Interestingly I ran into 蚕 today reading 新世界より.
I don’t think it even had furigana, but it was used as part of the word 蚕食 when describing a game of CTF the kids were playing.
(Looking up the word it means 他の領域を少しずつ侵していくこと, bit by bit invading the others’ territory. I suppose it’s similar to a solkworm eating a leaf or something)
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My children attend a British primary school where learning Mandarin Chinese and hànzì is compulsory.
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And that’s the standard in Britain?
Everyone please tell me every exception you know of to explain why 蚕 is an indispensable kanji.
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It’s quite the exception. Sorry if that came across as ganging up on you.
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I tend to use notebooks for Japanese primary school kids for practicing to write kanji. The first and last two pages always contain simple texts on topics supposedly interesting for school children (such as animals, astronomy, etc.). In the last notebook I used there was an article about the 合掌造り houses. The kanji for 蚕 came up several times and I needed to look it up.
But I think there is no point arguing about silk worms 
. The silk worm fans will study the kanji, everybody else can focus on stuff they are more interested in/find more relevant.
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The whole point of bringing it up is that it’s a kanji Japanese people are required to learn (which is why it’s also going to be used in materials for them, regardless of how interesting it is) but that no one should worry about not learning it because the odds of you ever being tested on it or needing it in the course of typical non-native activities (remember this is about supplementing WK with other resources) are quite low.
So, I’m not surprised you found it in a book for native children learning kanji, they have to learn it in 6th grade.
The topic is thoroughly derailed and is now about silkworms, so I apologize to the OP.
I forgot about making this thread and didn’t expect to come back to silkworms…
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What are the best supplementary resources for silkworms? What about after silkworms?
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I know exactly which part you are reading 
That word is also used in the expression 蚕食鯨呑 (that no one uses, but it was a word example back when I learned 蚕 
)
Oh yeah, right. Did I or someone else mention floflo yet?
It’s a website with a built-in SRS providing word lists from books, which helps reading them, but also learning those words, so that they’re not gone two days after you found them.
Floflo is compatible with WK in the sense that if you put in you wk key, it will automatically look up your level and remove from the word lists the words you should have learned from WK. (There’s also the option of removing from your reviews words that you learned before you got them on WK)
So I feel it’s a nice complement to WK. 
For grammar, I’ve been using a combination of Bunpro and Human Japanese. I really like digital platforms I can take with me on the go or access from anywhere. 
Bunpro is similar to Wanikani, it allows you to learn grammar in bite-size sessions and then has a built-in SRS to quiz you afterwards. It also provides links to sites if you want to learn the grammar points in more depth, but the Bunpro context/example sentences are pretty good for picking stuff up “by osmosis” if reading grammar articles gets too boring.
Human Japanese is a pair of apps (they’re about $10 each) that are available on Android/iOS. They’re basically digital books with a friendly intro to basic grammar. I like that there are simple quizzes built in, so there’s some interactivity after each chapter (they’re mostly just multiple-choice).
For free alternatives, I also really like LingoDeer (Android/iOS app) and Duolingo (web). In Duolingo, I always turn off their helper pickboxes and force myself to type in the full answer in Japanese, which really helps me start thinking in the language. Once you complete the English-to-Japanese tree, you can always flip and do Japanese-to-English, which is pretty interesting.
I’m still early in my studies so I’m mostly just dedicated to getting through Wanikani, but thinking of the future, there’s Memrise (web and app) that is like a fancy flashcard/language learning platform with a ton of free decks that folks have made (search the forums here for some great links!) I have a lot of Japanese decks queued up there that I’ll tackle when I’ve got more free time.
As I’ve started reading native material (mostly Twitter and YouTube comments 
), I’ve found that I come across a lot of new vocab with familiar Kanji that I’d like to drop into a deck. Something I’d like to explore are all the deck-making apps that are out there, since that seems like the next natural progression for expanding knowledge.
I would personally recommend starting off with “Human Silkworm” by Brak Softsilk. After that, either “Tobira, Gateway to Advanced Silkworm” or “Tapeworm Master” should suffice.
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