Insects and Minibeasts: A Creepy Crawly Experience for Grades 1-3
By Theresa Hughes-Feletar: Dip.Ed(ece);B.Ed;M.Ed. Updates as needed are by field-trips.org

Below are links and activities to use with the tour, but you may have many more of your own. They are designed to cross all areas of the curriculum and make use of the rich resources of the Internet as well as good classroom practices.

General

The Bay Area Bug Eating Society

Entomology for Beginners

The Food Insects Newsletter, Inc.

How to Use Insects As Food

The Crickets in the Classroom Page -- This page is about using common field and house crickets to teach skills of observation and measurement. The unit also includes basic information on cricket biology and introduces students to the scientific literature

Lesson Plan

BugPeople.org Curriculum -- A curriculum for elementary-school children from BugPeople.org, an entomology outreach program in Oakland, California

Science

• In your schoolyard- Find an unpaved area of your schoolyard and record by drawing or writing about the different types of insects you find. Note the areas of your yard where you find them (on the ground, on a leaf, on a branch, underground etc.).
• Camouflage and protection - Look closely at the insects on the websites and in your yard and consider how they are camouflaged against predators. Using an old fish tank or clear viewing container, create a small version of your yard and place some of the insects you find outdoors in it and observe their natural protective habits and systems.
• Life cycle mobile - Choose your favorite insect and find out the names for the stages of its life cycle. On round pieces of cardboard, draw, paint or print out pictures of the stages and label them. Place them in correct sequence and hang them, using fishing line, on a wire coat hanger and display for future reference.
• Pesticides in the environment - With the information learned from the Student Internet tour , extend your knowledge of the insects in your local area and the problems they may be causing to crops or vegetation in your community. Visit the local library or do further research using the following search engines to find out what kinds of pesticides are used in your area. Take photos (if possible) of your experiences and findings and write a pictorial report on your discoveries.
• Magnifying glasses - With your carefully caught insects in a shoebox, cover the opening of the box with plastic food wrap and secure tightly with an elastic band. Push a small indentation into the center of the plastic wrap and this will create a magnification area which will allow you to view your insects up close.
• Families - Make a graph of insect attributes, for example, number of legs, antennae, body parts, wings, eyes etc. Sort the insects you find in your observations on the Internet and in your own environment into groups. Find out whether any of the groups of insects are actually related and make a poster of the families of insects.

Social Studies

• Yummy bugs - Make a recipe book of insect food that you were interested in while looking at the websites about insects as food in different cultures. Make sure your recipe book tells the culture from which it came. You may wish to add a map of the country from which they come at the bottom of each recipe.
• Communities – Think about other species that like to live in communities. Research a different species using the Internet and create a project poster showing what you have discovered.
• Teamwork – Just as insects cooperate and work together to accomplish things, humans also can work together to accomplish things. From a deck of alphabet cards, choose a card and work in a group of 3 or 4 to recreate the letter on the floor using your bodies. Ask others to guess the letter that has been created.
• Roles and responsibilities – Each insect within its insect community has a role or responsibility to insure the smooth running of the community, for example, laying eggs, working, caring for the young, collecting food. We all have roles and responsibilities at school and home. Write about the people in the home and school communities and write and illustrate what their roles and responsibilities are. For example, Mother – prepare food for the children, wash clothes etc, Self – make bed, wash dishes etc.

Math

• Insect patterns - Look for pictures of insects that you can cut out and copy. Have a friend start a pattern and you continue the pattern. For example, ant, spider, spider, scorpion, ant, spider, spider, scorpion…
• Bugs by the yard - Using the pictures of your insects, measure your desk, foot, body, doorway, pencil and book. Record your results as "My desk is 3 scorpions, 6 ants and 2 spiders long." Record all your measurements and compare results and make comparisons. Try predicting answers before measuring and compare predictions with actual results.
• 10 times the weight – Keeping in mind facts about insects (for example, ants can lift 10 times their body weight) and using bathroom kitchen scales, measure the weight of objects such as a pencil, shoe, eraser and book and then calculate 10 times the weight and find objects that are equal to the amount. Record the information as "1 pencil x 10 = 4 erasers."
• Chance and data – Cut out 6 of your favorite insect pictures and glue them flat onto a die. Draw a graph with 6 columns titled with the names of your 6 different chosen insects as on the die. Roll the die 10 times and record what insect is rolled. By looking at the results, predict the probability of a chosen insect has of being rolled. Use the data recorded to compare the number of times certain insects have been rolled.
• Insect races – Carefully and safely catch two ants or another walking insect, draw a large circle on the pavement with a small circle in the center of that. Predict how long it will take each insect to get to the outer circle after being placed in the inner circle. Record your prediction and then place the insects down to test your prediction. Use a stopwatch to time the insects and compare your prediction and actual results. Try it with different kinds of insects and compare their speeds.

Language and Literacy

• 6 legs are better than 2 - Pretend that you are a 6-legged insect. Write a story about the benefits of having 6 legs. Write an imaginative story about what adventures you could have, how it would be great to have 6 legs. Imagine how fast you could run, make and do things, but also think about how long it would take you to put shoes and socks on, etc. Illustrate your story with a drawing of yourself with 6 legs doing something that you could only do if you had 6 legs.
• Adjective mobile - With small blank cards attached to fishing line and hung on a wire coat hanger, write adjectives to describe insects, for example, microscopic, small, segmented, spiky etc. Display the adjective mobile for future reference.
• Bugs eye view – Carefully and safely catch an ant or another crawling insect. Place it into a clear enclosed container with obstacles such as a few colored Lego blocks, a small twig, a small container of water and some cookie crumbs in a far corner. Place the insect in the observation container and pretend you can see from its perspective and narrate what it happening as it moves around the obstacles and possibly toward the food. Give your insect a name and write about the adventures of your insect in the observation container.
• Story publishing – Publish your insect adventure story at the computer using a word processing program. Use a drawing program to illustrate your story.
• Acrostic poem – Write the name of your insect in large letters vertically down your paper. Think about words to describe your insect and use the first letter on each line to write about your insect. For example:

  A – active, atomlike, abdomen, antennae
  N – narrow, nodes, nests
  T – tiny, teeny, teeny-weeny, thorax

• Insects across the world – Find out the names of as many insects as your can in as many languages as possible. Develop in into your own Insects Across the World Dictionary and publish it using a word processing program on your computer.
• "Superbug saves the world" cartoon strip – Using a large strip of paper, divide the paper into 4 segments. Choose your favorite insect to be the main character for a superhero bug cartoon strip. Name the character and decide on what super powers or strength it may have. Use your imagination to think about an adventure it could go on and how it could save the world in some way.

Music

Song - "Head, Thorax, Abdomen"
(sung to the tune of "head, shoulders, knees and toes")

Head, thorax, abdomen... abdomen,
Head, thorax, abdomen….abdomen,
Eyes and mouth and two antennae,
Head, thorax, abdomen….abdomen.

HOW TO - Point to the head, body and then bottom as you sing and point to eyes and mouth then use your fingers to make antennae from your forehead.

Art

• Giant insects - Use different shaped balloons covered with paper mache to build your favorite insect. Use toilet rolls, joined together with masking tape as the legs and straws or popsicle sticks as antennae. Paint on facial features.
• Egg carton insects - After observing an insect’s body structure, cut out the appropriate number of egg carton segments and use a variety of collage materials to add detail to your egg carton beast.
• Insect models – use playdough, clay or plasticine to model your favorite insect, detailing distinct body parts.
• Origami insects - This site shows completed origami insects and gives information on how to purchase a book showing the steps to this art:

Fun

Insect related riddles from the University of Kentucky Department of Entomology

Books

Ladybug. Written by Emery Bernhard, illustrated by Durga Bernhard, and published by Holiday House, New York.

Insects and Spiders. Written by Lorus J. and Margery Milne, illustrated by Claire Phipps, and published by Doubleday, New York.

The Ultimate Bug Book. Written by Luise Woelflein, illustrated by Wendy Smith-Griswold, and published by Western Publishing Co., New York.

Entomology (Real Kids/Real Science Series). Written by Ellen Doris, with original photography by Len Rubenstein, and published by Thames and Hudson, New York.

Caterpillars of North America (Peterson First Guides). Written and illustrated by Amy Bartlett Wright and published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, Massachusetts.

Creepy Crawlies. Written by Michael Chinery, illustrated by Ian Jackson, and published by Larousse Kingfisher Chambers Inc., New York, NY.

Flies Are Fascinating. Written by Valerie Wilkenson and published by Children's Press, Chicago, IL.

Scorpions. Written by Conrad J. Storad and published by Lerner Publications Co. Minneapolis, MN.

A Look Inside Spiders and Scorpions. Written by Dr. Paul Hillyard, illustrated by Steve Johnson, Gary Slater, Alex Pang, and Andrew Barrowman, and published by Reader's Digest Young Families, Inc. as a Joshua Morris Book.