It's a Bug Eat Bug World Out there!

My son and I just finished off our Bug Unit! It was SUCH a success- he LOVED IT! I added some new fun things this year so to check out my original Bug Unit post "All God's Critters" with lots of other fun ideas, click HERE!


Here's what our bug week consisted of this year: 

A Visit to Butterfly Wonderland


They just built the largest butterfly atrium in the United States right by us in Scottsdale, AZ!!  It was the perfect field trip for our bug week! They had a cool 3D movie at the beginning of our tour and then we got to go into a beautiful conservatory to see hundreds and hundreds of butterflies fly all around us! They also had live honey bees, spiders, ants, and scorpions to look at. My son was in heaven!!

"The Emerging Butterfly Gallery" had hundreds of cocoons! We learned all about how caterpillars become butterflies. 
It was such a great visual experience for my son to actually see how the process works:

Inside the Conservatory:

And the nice warm and humid conservatory was the perfect place for a good, long newborn nap :)

P.S. Arizona friends: They don't allow strollers in the conservatory so plan accordingly! I was so glad I had my baby carrier with me. 

Tissue Paper Butterflies

We made butterflies out of tissue paper and pipe cleaners. This craft is super simple and easy!

Name Caterpillar

We practiced spelling my son's name by making a caterpillar. 

Painted Paper Plate Lady Bug

Bugs for Lunch!

Spider sandwiches, "Ants on a Log" (celery, cream cheese and raisins), Lady Bug crackers and "Fuzzy Caterpillars" (Cheeto Puffs).

For instructions and a closer look at how to have "bugs" for lunch, click HERE!

My mom did her annual bug lunch with some of my nieces and nephews that live close by her. So fun!

B is for Bug:  Bug Workbook

I found a bunch of free bug worksheets for my son's age level online and printed them off to make a "Bug Workbook" for him. Below are a few links to some of the pages I found. We did bug matching, sorting, counting, etc. and we practiced sounding out and identifying bugs that start with the letter B (bee, beetle, butterfly, etc.)! 

Coloring Pages

Bug Worksheets

Bugs in a Jar Addition

Songs About Bugs

 Once I Caught a Bug Alive
(Sing to the same tune as 12345 Once I Caught a Fish Alive. We used the same exact lyrics, but just swapped the word Bug for Fish.)

The Itsy Bitsy Spider 

(Other Verses:  The Big Hairy Spider, The Little Yellow Lady Bug)

The Ants Go Marching

High Hopes (Rubbertree Plant)

The Ugly Bug Ball!
(If you haven't heard this song, its adorable and a must for bug week! Just youtube it! It was originally written for the movie Summer Magic by Disney.)

Verse 1: Once a lonely caterpillar sat and cried
To a sympathetic beetle by his side
I've got nobody to hug
I'm such an ug-i-ly bug

Then a spider and a dragonfly replied
If you're serious and want to win a bride
Come along with us, to the glorious annual ugly bug ball

Come on let's crawl (gotta crawl, gotta crawl)
To the ugly bug ball (to the ball, to the ball)
And a happy time we'll have there, 
one and all at the ugly bug ball!

A Bug Hunt

Since I don't deal with real bugs and because its so dang hot where we live, I did an indoor bug hunt using plastic bugs. Beckam LOVED it!!! He has to take his plastic bugs EVERYWHERE with him now, even to bed! (Lucky me!)  
I just hid plastic bugs around the house and then let him run around and try to find them. He'd "catch" them in his net and then put them all in his bug box. I found the net and bug box in Target's dollar section. Target for the win!

When we were all done we examined his bugs with a magnifying glass.

Be a Hungry Caterpillar!

We did our Hungry Caterpillar activity again this year. As I read the story Beckam got to try a piece of each of the foods that the caterpillar eats in the story. 

When he was all "stuffed" we rolled him up into his cocoon (towel). 

 Then, he broke free and became a butterfly!

I just had to post a few pics of my cute nieces and nephews doing the Hungry Caterpillar this last week at my mom's house. They make cute bugs! :



For a closer look and instructions on how we do our Hungry Caterpillar activity click HERE!



A Bug's Life 

And of course we had to have a popcorn movie night and watch A Bug's Life! 

Bug Books 

We got some fun bug books from the library too. There are soooo many out there but here were a few of our favorites: 

Thanks for stopping by! :)