Science Projects on Backyard Bugs
Science projects on backyard bugs can start at home with preschoolers and continue with more complicated themes at school. Once you start to look for bugs you will be amazed at how many types there are in your own backyard. Catching bugs to study is fun, which helps children find learning easier.
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Spider's Web Sketching
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Take your child into the backyard, preferably early in the morning while there is still dew on the grass outside. Find as many webs as you can, explaining that each is unique. See if there are bugs caught in some webs. Explain to your child that this is how spiders catch their food. With your child, choose the prettiest, or most intricate, webs and together try to copy the patterns as accurately as you can in a sketchbook.
Bug Skin Molting Demonstration
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"All insects can be called bugs, but not all bugs are insects," explains the Cool Bug Stuff website. All creepy crawlies and flying insects are referred to as bugs. Bugs, more specifically are arthropods. Arthropods have a hard exoskeleton, like beetles and lady bugs, for example. These lose their skin like lizards and snakes do periodically. This is called "molting." Take your child around the backyard looking for these kinds of bugs. Spread a little non-toxic white paper glue on the back of your child's hand and let it dry. Then peel it off, explaining how these bugs grow and molt their skin, much like how the glue comes off their hand. If your child is old enough to understand, explain about the life cycles of bugs like ants that start as an egg, become a larva which grows, molting repeatedly as it gets bigger. Then the pupa is covered by a cocoon while it metamorphosis into an adult. See if you can find bugs in any of these stages.
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Good Bug Project
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Although many people dislike bugs and think they are a pointless nuisance, most bugs actually serve some kind of useful purpose. Ecological systems can start to fail with the loss of bugs as they are integral to its survival. For example, some bugs are useful on certain crops to get rid of other unwanted bugs, while some bugs help break down decaying organic material, making nature's waste products useful again. Tell the children to choose a bug each to study. They should research their bug at the library and online, then write a paragraph about it, saying why it is a good bug and how it is helpful to us.
Equipment for Catching and Studying
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To do some serious bug studying, there is useful equipment available to help you. "Bug vacuums" usually have an attached clear container so that the children can study the bugs that they suck up with the machine. The child can easily collect bugs with these without harming them. A magnifying glass is useful to view bugs up close in their own environment, while a "bug viewer" uses mirrors and a magnifying lens to enlarge the view of the bug from all angles when you put it in between the two halves of the contraption. These items help kids study many different bugs and they can take the bugs home for a couple of days to research them further.
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References
- Photo Credit red bugs gray log image by Kostyantyn Ivanyshen from Fotolia.com
