Creepy Crawlers - Exploring Insects

Did anyone else have a Creepy Crawlers maker toy as a child? It is the chemically cousin to the Easy Bake Oven. It churned out neon colored jiggly bugs that a child cherishes for 2 minutes, before  the child promptly leaves the bug to be eaten by the dog off of a cream couch cushion. This weekend, as the weather decided it could act like Spring for a moment in Chicago, some real life creepy crawlers and winged creatures made their way into our yard.

This seemed like a prime opportunity to discuss insects.  I resisted the urge to purchase a Creepy Crawler maker toy, bug catching kit and a hazmat suit for myself. I kept it simple. We looked at meal worms and crickets, with a print out of their life cycles. We then fed the bugs to our box turtle, so if you do not have a turtle  laying around, I understand. We played with dollar store plastic bugs in homemade play dough and we made bugs out of stones and sticks, to breakdown the body parts of a bug.

Keeping it simple did take 30 minutes of prep work on my part, but we had fun and my son is still talking about how a spider is not an insect and repeating the word thorax. Because apparently it is hilarious to say. If Spring has sprung in your neck of the woods, give these little activities a try and let me know how your low-tech insect adventure goes!