How to catch, identify, and care for creepy crawlies and other bugs. 24 in all.
An illustrated field guide and activity book.

I’ve structured my kindergarten classes to follow four weekly sub-themes within each monthly theme, and this week we’re exploring “bugs” during our second week of the “Jungle, Rainforest, and Savannah” theme. I’ve been showing the kids pictures of the bugs and other creepy crawlies that I’ve found within our city and province, and we’ve enjoyed comparing and contrasting them to each other and to other exotic examples we’ve discovered online. I picked up this little book with hopes that it would provide a few ideas for classroom activities, and it did, but only in a sense.

This book is truly a “field guide for kids”: it’s pocket-sized, colorfully illustrated, and provides the general descriptions, eating habits, and habitat choices of 24 types of bugs or other mini-beasts. It’s very basic and would work as a great starter for the beginning young naturalist. In fact, I even learned a few things from the book. For example, I learned that the bug trying to saw its way out of the cheap, wooden couch provided me by my school several years ago was probably a longhorn beetle (58), and that the wood in the sofa definitely had no time to age!

The project idea that runs throughout the book is the concept of a “bug bottle”, though Dr. Danks never describes the guidelines for making one (I assume it’s just any old jar with an air-holed lid, but children might not assume that, even from the cover illustration). The activities he suggests are simply ideas for how one can watch or feed particular bugs, and therefore not exactly something my 4-5 year old kids could learn to do on their own. In fact, on our bug hunts, I have a hard time keeping a few of them from stomping on whatever we find!

This book would be a great asset for kids aged 7-12 who want to learn more about the creepy crawlies around them, especially if they’re new to the bug game. It’s a bit over the heads of kindergartners.

©2017 E.T.