This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Orkin Ecologist. All opinions are 100% mine.
October is the perfect month to teach your kids about all things creepy crawly, including the insects that live in your neighborhood. Orkin has made learning about all different kinds of bugs super easy and fun, with their Orkin Ecology website. The site has lots of buggy information that will turn your kids into insect experts in no time.
Their recent article, “5 Creatures That Have Evolved Into Badass Biological Machines,” explains how human inventions were actually evolutionary products in the insect world. One of those so-called inventions, gears, help the adolescent issus lock it’s legs together when it jumps so it can hit an acceleration of 400 gs in 2 milliseconds- all before it’s brain has time to register what’s happening! For reference, us humans will blackout if we go faster than 5gs. With this awesome discovery scientists and inventors are now researching more how the issus uses it’s gears and how we can adopt them for human use.
The Orkin Ecologist website is a great place to start learning about bugs with your kids, but bringing the creepy crawly bugs to life with a craft or game will bring everything together and help foster a lifelong respect and appreciation for insects.
My almost-two-year-old loves doing easy crafts with me so I thought making a bug chart of bugs we find in our state would be right up his alley. To start the project, I printed out a map of our state, Illinois, and 14 common bugs in our area. I cut the bugs out and let my son tape them to the map.
After all the bugs had been taped I laminated the map as well as the names of each bug. To make the map an interactive toy I affixed hook and loop tape to both the map and laminated names.
While my son can’t read yet, he had a blast putting the names on the map. We repeated the names of all the bugs as he was putting them on the map.
Between this interactive craft and the Orkin Ecology site, your kids will be bug experts in no time. Just make sure you have a few old mason jars with holes in the lids in case they choose to bring some inside one day!
This would be great for my boys. They LOVE bugs!
What a cute project. My girls would be so grossed out…lol
This is adorable!! Thanks for sharing!
My son would love this, he has a bug collection
I love this and I’m going to get this for my son. He is starting to get into bugs.
My son would love something like this!
man my kids would NEVER work on something like that with me. i wish they would.
This is such a cool idea! I needed a new project to make with my laminator! :D
My 9-year-old wants to be an entomologist when he grows up – so I will DEFINITELY be looking into these for him! Thanks!