What’s Bugging Your Garden?  

Sounds kinda funny don’t you think?

 

This is our last post for the Homeschool Village Garden Challenge 2011, and we chose to focus on Garden Bugs.  We have had so much fun with this whole garden challenge learning project this summer.

So after doing all these fun learning adventures with the garden, I thought I would put together a Garden Bug Unit Study to go along with our Garden Unit Study and share it with you too.


Garden Bug Unit Study

Books We Read
I searched our book shelves, and came up with these great stories to explain more about garden bugs:

Topsy Turvey Tracy  The Grimy Slimy Bug Safari


Bugs Life (read the book, and watched the movie).
Black Widow Spiders, Creepy Bugs, Flying Bugs, I Like Bugs, Strange And Amazing Insects, It’s Alive, Slimmy Slugs and so much more…….


We also watched a DK movie called Insects.


Lesson Plans, Unit Studies, and Lapbooks

Did you know that you might find over 40 different bugs in your garden at any given time?  Here is a great website to give you an introduction in identifying some of the bugs in your garden.
http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Gardeners-Site/default/Search-PestsDiseases

How to naturally reduce garden pests.
http://www.gardeners.com/Managing-Pests-Diseases/5064,default,pg.html

What is pollination and how do bugs help polinate the plants in the garden?
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/index.shtml
and
http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-plans/pollination-parties.cfm

Beneficial garden insects verses pest
http://www.gardeners.com/Beneficial-Bugs/7326,default,pg.html

Non-poisonous verses poisonous bugs (we live where there are various kinds of black widow spiders, brown recluse spiders, wasps, hornets, centipedes, milipedes, fire ants, and so on that cause painful injuries from injecting poinons into their victims).

Homeschool Share: Ant Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ant_lapbook.php

Homeschool Share: Bee Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/honey_bee_lapbook.php

Homeschool Share: Butterfly Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/butterfly_lapbook.php

Homeschool Share: Dragonfly Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/dragonfly.php

Homeschool Share: Praying Mantis Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/praying_mantis.php

Homeschool Share: Snail Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/snails.php

Bug Facts
http://www.earthlife.net/insects/six.html

Yucky Bug Facts and Games
http://yucky.discovery.com/roaches/

Butterfly Facts
http://butterflywebsite.com/

Adopt An Insect Unit Study
http://sciencespot.net/Pages/adinsless.html

Spider Unit Study For Kinders
http://www.kinderkorner.com/spiders.html

Garden Pest Unit For Older Students
http://www.k12.hi.us/~ckuroda/pest.htm




Printables
great for coloring, matching, skills practice, lapbooking, notebooking, and more.

Pretty Bugs
http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/2011/05/pretty-bugs-creatures-preschool-pack.html

Garden Printables
http://homeschoolcreations.com/gardenpreschoolpack.html



C is for Catepillar
http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2009/10/prek-letter-c.html

Laddy Bug Math File Folder Game
I love this math game!!!  You can adjust it to be simple or more complicated based on your students skill level.
http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2010/07/ladybug-spot-addition-file-folder-game.html

Montessori Garden Printables
http://livingmontessorinow.com/tag/gardening-unit/

Insect Coloring Pages
http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/minsectposter.html

and

http://funschool.kaboose.com/preschool/art-activity-center/printables/bug-coloring-pages.html

and

http://www.first-school.ws/theme/animals/cp_insects.htm

Activities & Crafts

Draw A Bug Game
http://www.proteacher.org/a/81847_Draw_an_Insect.html

Bug Bingo Game
http://familycrafts.about.com/od/bugcrafts/ss/Bug-Bingo-Game-Cards.htm

Paint A Bug pages from the dollar store




Bottle Top Bugs craft
http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2010/05/bottle-top-bugs.html

Love Bugs craft
http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-bugs.html

Foam Bug Craft Kit from the dollar store


Bug On A Stick craft kit from the dollar store.

Lots of bug crafts
http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/bugs.html

DLTK: Insect Crafts
http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/insects/crafts.htm

Family Fun: Bug Crafts
http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/crafts-by-type/animal-bug-crafts/bug-themed-crafts/


Go on a garden bug hunt and search for bugs and worms.  Use hand shovels, butterfly nets, containers, tweezers, etc. to capture a few harmless bugs to observe them, and then release them back to the garden.  We found worms, beetles, pill bugs, flies, ladybugs, ants, spiders, bees, wasps, butterflies, etc.

worm


fly in our butterfly net


ants


ants


pill bug



Activity Trays

Activity trays with plastic bugs for the kids to sort, count, play, and role play.




Sensory Bins

Sensory & discovery bin.  This can be a small bin, or a large bin.  I made both. 




I  used small river rocks, plastic bugs, various scoops, tongs, funnels, and containers for lots of creativity, some small flowers or plants, sticks (to use as trees or logs or just use as sticks for bugs to crawl on or hide under), use green felt or foam (for a green lawn or to make a mini garden scene), use a minnow net as a butterfly net, colored glass rocks to make a pond and larger rocks for bugs to crawl on or hide under.








Science Experiments

I can’t wait to share some of these fun bug science experiments with you.  But you will have to wait until a future story.  I’ll link it back here when it is finished. 

I found this great science experiment book at the dollar store, and it is totally creepy and lots of fun.



This is another great science book about insects and plants and we have done several experiments from this book too.



Here are some more ideas you can do without a science book:

Grow a bee garden. Plant sunflowers and various flowering plants to attract and observe the bees.

Grow a butterfly garden.  Plant different flowers that attract butterflies and observe their behavior and life cycle.

Raise various bugs from eggs or larve (you can buy these on line, or find them free in nature): lady bugs, butterflies, praying mantis, ants, etc.

Tend a worm bin or worm bed.  Buy it or make it yourself.  Put in a pound of worms for each bin you raise.  Add newspaper, soil, kitchen vegetable and fruit scraps,  and obeserve the worms life cycle and their ability to turn everything into compost.  Apply the compost to your garden and continue the process again and again.

Use a magnifiying glass to look at a live and / or plastic bug up close.  Have the children describe or draw the different body parts of the bug.  Have older children lable the body parts.

What do bugs eat?  Choose a bug and find out if it eats your garden plants, or if it eats other bugs. 



Make Rubber Bugs

We made rubber bugs with a bug machine “Creepy Crawler”.  I found this on clearance for $5 last year.  It is just like an easy bake oven, only it bakes rubber instead of cookies.  It comes with two baking trays, a tray pusher, and various colors of liquid rubber goop to make your designs.  The baking trays are molds that shape the bugs.  Ours contained a spider, fly,  worm, dragonfly, scorpion.



The boys had so much fun taking turns designing their own “creepy crawlers”.



The process was fool proof.  Add a few squirts of colored liquids into the mold/baking pan. 



You can make whatever designs you like.



Place in mini oven.  The mini oven sets its own timer automatically, and shuts off automatically when it is done.  It was very easy to work with.



Allow the bugs to cool.  Then remove from baking tray.  We filled almost two whole cookie sheets, and must have made 50 of these, but I could not find all the pictures of the different colored ones. 







Field Trips:

We visited several places to enhance our learning about gardens and insects. 

Roper Mountain Science Center Butterfly Garden
         and Living History Farm Garden

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day.  My 11 year old son used my camera to capture several lovely pictures from this trip.  Here is a snap shot of a bee pollinating a purple cone flower.  He is going to enter one of his many photos he took on this day in an upcoming photo contest. 







Farmers Market / Tailgate Market to see what farmers grow in their gardens to sell to the public.







Carl Sandburg Gardens




Insect Recipes

Want to try eating some bugs?
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/misc/insectsasfood.html


Other Garden Unit Stories

Be sure to read our other Garden Stories and Garden Unit Study
http://weiseracademy.com/categories/Garden.aspx


Be sure to check out other homeschool families stories about their garden challenge at Homeschool Village
http://www.thehomeschoolvillage.com/2011/06/hsv-garden-challenge-june-sponsored-by-currclick.html


This post will also be linked up with
ABC and 123
Raising Homemakers
No Time For Flash Cards
Science Sunday
The Play Academy