Learning about Insects for Home and School

Assembling unit studies is one of the things that I like doing.  Last summer, we worked on insects and I made a compilation of work which the boys did over the years on learning about these amazing animals.  You will absolutely love these ideas and they are perfect for kids from 5 to 10 years old.

INSECTS OUTDOOR STUDY

Nothing beats hands-on experience.  Start your study by spending time outdoors and observing those creepy crawlers.  We’ve spent our summer afternoons in the fields looking at ants, bees, and other bugs.  Prepare some bug catching tools.  Kids love bringing home some of these insects at home.  We are using our FREE Insect Habitats Learning Material in this activity.

INSECTS

Insects are animals with six legs and segmented bodies.  Most probably, your little ones have no idea what “segmented bodies” mean but they can identify which animals have six legs.  Using animal figures, make your kids count the legs of the toy animals and differentiate between animals with six legs and animals that don't have six legs.  We are using Safari Toobs in this activity for their detailed figures.

If the insect figures are not available, we also have a printable version.  My little one loves using these as well!  You will find these and other activities in our Mini Insect Learning Pack.

Kids also love working with puzzles, so this Montessori Wasp Puzzle is a perfect learning tool in presenting the basic parts of an insect.  The puzzle goes perfectly with Montessori parts of an insect 3 part cards (parts of an insect, ant, caterpillar or grasshopper).

As an extension work, my eldest uses the activity sheets / blackline masters to identify the parts of an insect and he assembles them into a booklet.

IDENTIFYING INSECTS

Identifying different insects is also a must in an insect unit study.  I personally encountered all of these while growing up in Asia, unlike my kids they seldom see these here in Ireland so this lesson is important to us.

Vito enjoyed our syllables counting in our Back to School Pack so I added this activity into our insect unit learning materials.  He loves the idea of clapping and counting thus enabling him to learn how to properly pronounce the name of each insect.  Learning how to segment words are very important in helping the child to master phonics, learn how to spell words, read words, and pronounce the names correctly.

Silhouette or shadow matching is great for visual closure and discrimination.  You can download this from here (FREE Insects & Spider Silhouette Cards) for free.

INSECTS LIFE CYCLES

Life cycle lessons are always integrated in our animal study so the child will know where these animals came from and how they develop as they grow.  I have two sets of life cycle activities, one is designed for younger kids (Toddlers and Preschoolers, Early Childhood Life Cycle Mats) and the other is suitable for grade schoolers (Butterfly Life Cycle Sequencing Cards and Posters, Ladybug Life Cycle Sequencing Cards and Posters).  You will find all our life cycle learning materials / printables here.

INSECT THEMED MATH ACTIVITIES

Here’s a fun caterpillar activity that Vito enjoyed.

We also did a lot of counting using these I SPY CARDS and butterflies (Safari Ltd Butterflies Bulk Bag).

Counting fireflies and matching it to the number symbol.

A silly way to make shapes and insects!

And these are the classic insect themed cards and counters.

All of these insect-themed math activities are available in in our Insect Themed Mini Unit Learning Pack.

OTHER GAMES AND INSECT ACTIVITIES

My youngest enjoys this Insect Themed BINGO Game.  You can assemble the dice, but we used this foam dice with pockets so we can reuse this again and again with other themed games.

Learning Resources has these fantastic insect counters.  We own both (Learning Resources LER9441-D Take 10! Color Bug Catchers and Learning Resources In the Garden Critter Counters) and use them in our color sorting and other math activities.

We also enjoy working on these insect printable puzzles.  These are free in my shop and I highly recommend that you laminate the file to make the puzzles durable.  The default size of these puzzles are big so be sure to set your printer in two pages per sheet.

Vito loves these insect specimens (Real Bugs Discovery Kit)!  We examined each and used our Bug Cards from Usborne to learn about these creepy crawlers.


Finally, we love these bugs playdough picture mats!