“All good work is done the way ants do things: little by little.”
-Lafcadio Hearn

Here in Florida, we have an abundance of bugs and critters that live right in our backyard! We took a few weeks this spring to learn about the real purpose of snails, insects, and spiders, and how much we need them in the world. So, to start our unit study, we looked right in our own backyard, at some arthropods who live under a log.
You can use this handy chart I made to see which critters fall into which category of arthropods. Just click the photo on the left to get the free download from teachers pay teachers.
I really wanted my kids to understand that not all bugs and critters are created equally. There are insects, arachnids, millipedes, centipedes, and crustaceans – which are all arthropods! We also learned that snails and slugs do not fall into the category of arthropods, like most of the other bugs we are familiar with!
Books
Our library had TONS of really great books about bugs. My favorite one is made by the Smithsonian Institute. If you pick up this book, it is not a quick read. It is in depth information about all kinds of bugs, and it takes a few hours to get through. So, we broke this up over a couple days. But it was definitely at the top of my list.
- “Everything you need to know about Bugs” – Smithsonian – this book covers in detail many different types of insects, spiders, etc. It has a few interactive activities and is engaging. The book is long, so it is better to be broken up to let the information really sink in. The only thing this book only touches on, is the life cycle of an insect. So, you might want a separate book for that. I would look for this book at the library, or if you can’t find it, you can buy it from Amazon here.
- “On Beyond Bugs” – Tish Rabe – this rhyming cat in the hat style book. Have it read to you here. We found this book silly but also informative.
- “Nature Close-up Bugs” – Elaine Pascoe – For this book, you can either read it all, or skim through and check out the pictures. It has many close ups of interesting bugs and some activities in the back of the book.
- “Head and Tails Insects“ – John Canty – for the younger kiddos, they would enjoy this brief tough on the different types of bugs. Here you can find the read aloud on youtube.
- “100 Bugs” – Kate Narita – this is a counting book about bugs, better for the children under 6. You can have it read to you here.
- “Diary of a Worm” – Doreen Cronin – this book is so CUTE! It’s pretty long, and it’s just for fun, which is why I added it last to the list. It tells about a worm’s journey and other animals and people that he encounters along the way. You can find it here or at the library.
Videos about Bugs
My kids love watching all the crazy things that creatures can do. Two of our personal favorites, are short clips by Dr. Binoc (which is a cartoon) and anything made by national geographic. See below for our recommendations:
- Dr. Binoc – “How Amazing are Spiders” – short cartoon video on spiders
- Dr. Binoc – “FireFlies” – short cartoon video on why fireflies glow
- National Geographic -They have several longer documentaries, about 45-60 minutes long. My girls liked these two: Ant Documentary and Army Ants. Disclaimer: These can be a little scary for those little ones who are sensitive so use caution and know your child.
- “The World under a Rock” – short video on the life of animals under a rock
- “”The Dirt on Decomposers” and “Life Under a Log”– 2 short videos on the purpose of animals that decompose. The videos on both on a page by the Homeschool Scientist blog. Life under a log shows a bunch of live animals.

Art Projects
My older daughter really enjoys being creative and experimenting. Since we had just finished up our Easter Egg hunt at the house, she decided to make something with the leftover egg shells – a centipede and a snake! All you need for this project is plastic eggs, string, scissors, hot glue, eye balls, and a sharpie. You can watch her make the snakes and centipedes on her youtube video here.

Another “art” project that we did was to create a snail snack! Yes, I know, a snail is not a bug, but we were studying all the creatures that live under a log, so we created these snacks. This was so fun and entertaining for the kids. We used celery as the “foot” of the snail and peanut butter to stick everything together. The shell was slices of apple, the antennae, pretzel sticks, and the eyes chocolate chips!

We also made dirt cups!! Earth Day happened to co-incide with our insect unit, so we looked up some fun treats to make that went along with both themes! If you want to know how to make these fun cups you can view it on our post about Earth Day under activities.
For the dirt cups you need pudding mix (or make your own like we did- recipe here), gummy worms, cool whip, and Oreo cookies. Super delicious.
Science

For the last craft, we used a Mystery Science lesson. If you aren’t familiar with their website, they offer science lessons, many of which are free. Each lesson comes with it’s own instructions and printables.
This lesson talked about butterflies, and why they are certain colors. The kids also made their own with a card you could give to others. (You can see a close up of the butterfly at the top of the page). My kids asked me to print out more and more of these sheets, and as you can see, they made a bunch of butterflies! Bonus: They played with them all day!
More Science on Bugs
Before we got into our bug catcher, we just went out side and picked up a few rocks and logs to see what kind of creatures we could find underneath. Here in Florida, we found many different types of beetles, tons of ants, and my kids personal favorites: roly-polys (aka pill bugs).
We took some time to go inside and get on the computer to see if we could identify any of the different beetles that we found in our backyard. This website is great for identifying Florida beetles, and I’m sure has other locations on their website as well.

Next, the kids ventured into creating some type of device to put some bugs into and observe. They created a bug “catcher” with a Gatorade bottle and some mesh that we had lying around. You could use any plastic container. I cut a hole in the front and had the girls fill it with material that they thought would be interesting to a bug. Then we put the screen on. we left the opening to the Gatorade bottle as is, so that bugs could crawl in or out freely.
Life of Bugs

During this study, we talked about the different parts of different bugs. For my Kindergarten student this was a very basic overview, but for my second grader, who likes to go more in depth, I made her some charts about the parts of spiders and insects. You can purchase these from my tpt store.
I also had her compare the differences between the two. We watched a few episodes of the magic school bus about insects to learn more. There are four on the topic of bugs! They are available on Netflix, or click the links below:
If you don’t have Netflix, and you can’t catch the one on the beehive, you could also check out a Cat in the Hat episode about bees and how they make honey!
Additional Resources
We incorporated a few other activities into our unit. I wanted to tie in some writing and math into the bug unit. I created some writing prompts for my kids, mostly involving creative writing topics about what it would be like to be a bug!
To incorporate math, another great resource is bedtime math. If you aren’t familiar with bedtime math, it’s a free math problem for each day, and it is scaled to different levels. Just another way to make math fun. For insects, we used bedtime math’s activity about ants. We also played a math bug game that I created, called “Bugs on a Log”. This was a favorite for my Kindergarten girl. You can buy it from Teachers pay Teachers ($1.50) by clicking the picture to the right.
Hope you enjoyed our bug unit! For more fun, Visit our pages on our last unit about Oceans and the Water Cycle!