Montessori Inspired Insect Activities for Preschoolers

Here’s a summary of our insect activities for the past week.  Most of these materials are old and reused and many of our activities were not planned but are based on Vito's interest because bugs and other tiny creatures appeared earlier than expected.  Hope this post will give you some ideas on learning activities about these creatures!

LIFE CYCLES

This is one of the most productive activity the boys and I did.  Aside from matching the animal figures to the cards, the boys and I discussed how the different stages of the insects differ from each other.  Using the pictures in the cards and the miniature figures, we compared the eggs of the butterfly to the egg/s of an ant, a ladybird, and a bee.  We did the same thing for the larva and pupa stages.  The figures were very useful because they get to have a tangible object that they can observe and compare.  Read more about our activities on the life cycles here, Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of Insects.

WHAT ARE INSECTS?

This is a simple and straight forward activity where we sorted out our selected animal figures on whether they are insects or not.  Know more about this activity here, "What are Insects?".

WASP PUZZLE

We love our Montessori zoology puzzles, and we get to use our wasp puzzle when we caught a wasp at home.  We placed the wasp in our insect viewer, observed it, and later on worked on the puzzle to familiarize and identify its body parts (basic).

DIFFERENT KINDS OF INSECTS

Of course, to know more about insects, we looked at the common insects that we could find at home and outdoors.  We used these Usborne Fact Cards, which I highly recommend, to guide us in our identification activity.


We also love our "Animalium: Welcome to the Museum" book, which we love to use whenever we do an animal study.

BOOKS ABOUT INSECTS

Here are the three books that we mostly read during our insect study:

• About Insects
• The Ladybird
• The Butterfly

These are so good, easy to read, and have beautiful realistic illustrations which are perfect for kids!

INSECT HABITATS

Just like other animals, insects have their own habitats too! So using our FREE Insect Habitats learning material, we learned where to find flies, grasshopper, ants, damselflies, etc.  To learn more about the activity where we used these cards check my post on Complete Guide to Insect Study for Grade-Schoolers.


I printed out this picture of a bog/lake to show the kids that dragonflies mostly live in watery areas because this is where they reproduce.

INSECT SILHOUETTES

We had fun matching our insect figures to their silhouettes!  This is another FREEBIE in the blog and can be download from here (FREE Insect and Spider Silhouette Cards).

COLORS OF BUTTERFLIES

Our Montessori Tablets Box 3 is so useful whenever we learn about colors of nature!!!  This is a color matching activity using Safari Toob Butterflies and our tablets for visual perception.  You can learn more about this activity here, Montessori Inspired Butterfly Coloring Matching Activity.

COUNTING BUGS

Finally, I always try to integrate counting activities in our unit studies.  Here I've set up a play pretend indoor garden (you can also do this activity outdoors), placed a few bug counters and made Vito count using a tweezer.  You can know more about it here, Indoor Garden Play for Counting Bugs.


Which activities did you like?

LIST OF INSECT RELATED ACTIVITIES

• The World of Arthropods Part One
• The world of Arthropods Part Two
• FREE Arthropods Chart
• Insect Activities for Preschoolers
• Life Cycle of a Butterfly for Preschoolers
• Grasshoppers
• Parts of a Ladybird
• Life Cycle of a Ladybug
• FREE Butterfly Definition and Nomenclature Cards