Bug Bulletin Board

Paper Plate Ladybug

Paper Bowl Bumblebee

Egg Carton Ant

Summer Fun with Bugs!

Making Bugs in our Creepy Crawler Maker

The Bug Station

Our Bug Station

The kids like to use the magnifying glasses to look at the fake bugs, and the real ones too!

The Ants are Here!

This is a gel ant farm.  They are much easier than a traditional ant farm.  The gel is their food and water and you don't have to do anything!  With the other ant farms, it is very easy to overfeed and give them too much water.  Believe me!  I know my ant farms!  The ants come separate in a little vial.  You put them in the fridge for a half hour before putting them in the farm.  It slows them down....way down.  Then you don't have to worry about them biting when putting them in!

There is a light you can buy (separately of course) to go under the ant farm so it glows!  This is the start of a tunnel just a couple hours after we put the ants in!

These are tunnels about 6 hours after the ants were in the farm.  They start tunneling and never stop!  It is so cool to watch!

This happened overnight!

This is the end of the second day!

This is two weeks later!  They have been busy!  It says the ants are supposed to live for 1 to 3 months.

Books About Bugs

Beautiful Bugs  by Daisy Connell
Busy Honeybees  by Justin McCory Martin
What Is An Insect?  by Jeff Bauer
Strange Bugs  by Justin McCory Marin
One Hundred Hungry Ants  by Elinor J. Pinczes
Fantastic Ants  by Elizabeth Bennett
The Bug Book  by Kathy Kranking
Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!  by Bob Barner
Insect Homes  by Lydia Carlin
I Love Bugs!  by Pilemon Sturges
Buzzy the Bumblebee  by Denise Brennan-Nelson
Bugs!  by David T. Greenburg
Slugs  by  David T. Greenburg
Mr. Bumble  by Kim Kennedy
The Ant Bully  by John Nickle
The Itsy Bitsy Spider  by Iza Trapani
The Grouchy Ladybug  by Eric Carle
The Very Lazy Ladybug  by Isobel Finn & Jack Tickle
Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin
Diary of a Spider  by  Doreen Cronin
Diary of a Fly  by Doreen Cronin

The Earthworm Nursery

The top picture are Vermipods.  Vermipods are small clay balls and inside the clay ball is the earthworm cocoon.  The cocoons look like little apple seeds (see picture 2).  You put the vermipods in a net and dissolve the clay and then put them in the small plastic container titled Vermipod Earthworm Cocoons.  Some of the worms hatched out right away.  Once they hatch then you put them in the Earthworm Nursery, that has dirt in it and you sprinkle in some food.  Stay tuned to see how big the worms get!  I ordered these from http://www.insectlore.com.

The Ladybug's Are Here!

The first container is what the ladybug larvae come in.  You empty them all into the Ladybug Land and put the lid on.  The stuff in the container that looks like sand is the larvae food.  There is a small sponge that you keep wet for them to drink.  The larvae get bigger and molt their skin a few times.  Stay tuned for what happens next!  I ordered these from http://www.insectlore.com.

If you look close, you can see a yellow blob.  That is the larvae making his cocoon.  If you click on the image you can see it better.  All of the larvae are getting ready to turn.  They crawl on the side of the dome and lay upside down with their legs in the air, it's really weird!  Stay tuned......

We have lady bugs!  When they hatch they are a yellow color but they turn more orange.  You feed them raisins!