Playing with and Learning about Bugs

Spring seems like the perfect time for talking about bugs in the classroom or at home, but kids tend to love bugs all the time. Here are some educational ideas having to do with bugs as well as bug crafts and sensory activities.

Learn about the life cycle of a fly with Living Life and Learning. The post discusses all the stages a house fly goes through, and there’s a free printable with the stages labeled and a worksheet where kids can fill in the stages. You could also cut them apart and have kids put the back in the right order and label them.

Active Little Kids has some basic insect worksheets for kids, and Living Life and Learning also has a great set of insect counting cards and puzzles.

You’ll find lots of fun bug activities and worksheets at Teachers Pay Teachers, including a cute bug bingo from Preschoolers and Sunshine to help them learn spring vocabulary and a huge printable set from Pocket of Preschool that includes life cycle, parts of bugs, fun facts and information on determining what is and is not an insect.

This bug sensory bin from Crafty Kids Play looks like a lot of fun, and it uses black beans and paper crinkles as a base so it’s pretty easy to pull together.

Make some playdough and play with bugs in it with this idea from Ruffles and Rain Boots. The color on theirs ended up perfect for the color of dirt we have where I live, but you can make it more brown or red or even black depending on what your local dirt looks like.

Get outside and do a letter recognition “bug spray” activity like this one from Toddler Approved. So cute!

Ice excavation is another classic craft you can give a buggy spin by freezing bugs in your ice. Get all the details from Friends Art Lab.

If you have an outdoor place where you can observe bugs, you might want to make an easy bug hotel like this one from Happy Toddler Playtime. It’s easy to do with stuff from the yard or playground, and a great way to invite bugs to a place you can observe them.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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