Preschool Corner ~ Getting Buggy

A friend of ours {hi Catherine!!} invited us over this week to do a ‘mini-camp’ of sorts. We spent a few mornings over her house with all of our kids {preschool up to 4th grade} and had fun learning about a few bugs, making some crafts, creating some yummy treats and just having fun. Cindy from Along the Way joined us one of the days too.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera on the first day, but made up for it on the second day by taking over 100 picture. I’m so glad we have a digital camera. :) The first day we learned about ladybugs and on our second day we talked about ants.

LadyBugs

Catherine started off each morning with a devotional time…and we read a book about the insect we were studying. After we sat down to make a craft ~ some cute little bug jars from Oriental Trading.

The kids also made some ladybug beanbags {felt circles filled with rice} and glued some spots on them. They weren’t quite dry enough to play a game with, so we had to use plain beanbags to play ‘catch the aphid’, where the kids had to toss a beanbag on a giant leaf and try to land on one of the green foam dots.

Snack for our ladybugs was a yummy cookie that the kids frosted and put little candy dots on {not healthy…but fun!}.

Ants

After devotions on ‘Ant Day’ we read Are You an Ant? and even I learned some fun facts about ants ~ did you know that ants can stroke an aphid? That they have two stomachs? The Are You? series are great books…and ones that we’ll be checking into more.

Craft time was an ant made out of egg cartons. The kids painted them black and used pipe cleaners for legs and antennae. 

 

For snack we made anthills {aka chocolate pudding and crushed graham crackers} and the kids added chocolate covered raisins for the queen ants and mini chocolate chips for the worker ants.

 

Right after we finished our story time, we took three lids outside to see if we could attract ants. One lid had a chunk of watermelon in it, one had water, and one had some apple juice.

After about an hour we went back down to check out the caps to see if we had any ant action. The kids guessed that the watermelon would have ants on it ~ and it did! The water had no visitors and the apple juice had a few ants. Can you see the little visitors?

Stories & Books We Used

These are some of the books that we read at home to learn a little more about our insect friends.

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