Fun Bug Learning Activities

I recently shared a roundup of activities related to butterflies, and while butterflies are great, they aren’t the only bugs we should be paying attention to or learning about. So now I bring you bug learning activities having to do with bees, ladybugs, praying mantises and more!

Learning about Bugs

You might be able to find some bugs to observe in the dirt in your own backyard or playground. This super simple “experiment” from Go Science Kids gives you permission to get a little dirty while you’re learning.

I had no idea that you could buy ladybug larvae, but apparently that’s a thing, so you can buy them and raise them to learn about their life cycle as well. Learn more at Crafty Moms Share.

Or you can purchase mealworms and keep them in the classroom or at home. There’s a great lesson outline and printable worksheets for tracking the bugs at Teaching Ideas.

Why not create a cricket habitat and learn about nocturnal animals? Check out this idea at Capri Plus 3.

Bug Learning Activities

Match colors on the backs of bugs with this printable pom pom matching activity from Artsy Craftsy Mom.

Grab some cute bug coloring pages from Red Ted Art.

Learn about the life cycle of a praying mantis with this printable lapbook from Darcy and Brian.

The Wise Owl Factory has a little printable book all about bugs that kids can color and fill in the blanks as they learn.

Homeschool Preschool has printables related to the life cycle of a bee and other bee activities you can purchase.

Bring a little more STEM into your bug adventures by making light up bugs with playdough. Learn how at Mama Smiles.

Bug-Themed Games

Why not play games with bugs? Here’s a bug bingo from Nature Inspired Learning, which has eight different cards to use.

Or try a bug I-spy with this printable from And Next Comes L.

This Catch a Bug printable game from Picklebums is super cute and you can play it in different ways to learn different things.

Get on your feet and move like a bug with insect movement dice from Taming Little Monsters.

Next Plan Idea:

Learning about Bees for Kids

With summer coming soon in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a fun time to incorporate activities and crafts with a sunny theme. Take some time to learn about the sun (this post from National Geographic Kids is a good one) and then do some sun activities.

Sun prints are a classic summer activity, and there are lots of ways to do them, from placing objects on construction paper (like in this craft from MomBrite) or by using sun print paper (aka cyanotype paper).

Practice threading, counting, color sorting and other skills with this easy sun threading activity from Taming Little Monsters.

Lessons 4 Little Ones has a great blog post full of ideas for science experiments using the sun, such as melting crayons, looking at shadows, making a sun dial and trying a solar oven. Printables to go with the lessons are available for purchase or you can just talk through the students’ hypotheses about what will happen and draw or otherwise record the results.

This updraft tower from Almost Unschoolers is a cool way to illustrate that the heat of the sun causes an updraft, which makes the pinwheel spin. This is a good one to do inside near a sunny window so you don’t have wind spinning the pinwheel instead.

You’ll want to get out in the sun to try this experiment form Life with Moore Babies to see what kinds of things the sun can melt. Using different kinds of sweets you can see how the sun melts things by itself and how you can concentrate the power of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Playing with shadows is fun for kids of all ages, and you can track a shadow through the day with this experiment from Science Sparks. If you’re working with multiple kids they can each choose an object to shadow (ha!) and at the end of the day you can see how different their shadows looked.

And of course you’ll want to make a sun themed suncatcher craft, right? This one from Fox Farm Home uses all the pretty flowers you collect on your nature walk and puts them in a sun-shaped frame.

Learning about Bugs

Bug Learning Activities

Bug-Themed Games

Next Plan Idea:

Have you read?

Leave a Reply