A fun insect craft for preschool

Hi! It’s future Ticia 2020, and this insect craft was such a blast to put together, and I wanted to update a few things and let everyone see how you can use this to expand the learning beyond the play for your fun science lessons.

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Insect Craft supplies

model magic, pipe cleaners, beads, scissors 

Truthfully whatever odds and ends you think the kids might enjoy putting in.

Let’s put together this insect craft

Honestly, the goal of this project is to see what your kids have learned after studying insects, so it’s not like I really did a step by step with the kids, but just turned them loose.

1.  Cut pipe cleaners to about 2-3 inches.  Hint, don’t use your good scissors, this will ruin them.

2.  Roll 3 balls, this is your head thorax, and abdomen.  Notice Superman decided his insect needed feet and added them to the bottom of his legs.  I thought this was quite original because I hadn’t thought of it.

 3.  Put beads on for eyes.  You have to mold the dough around them somewhat or else they fall out.

Oh, and I’ve been watching entirely too many crafting shows with my kids because they were all set to put our project in the oven and bake it like you do Sculpey….. 
4.  Stick the pipe cleaners in the abdomen for a proper insect.  And if you’re so inclined, like Princess was, give your insect a random extra leg on top of his back.

Now show off your insect and play with him.  Be careful because he won’t be properly dry for about a day.

And here’s the story Princess came up with for her insects, and the ones I made:  This is the Mommy, and that’s the Daddy, and that’s the kiddo.  Your kiddo is bad and she can’t play with my kiddo.  The Mommy is going to feed the baby.  He’s hungry.  The Mommy has lots of eggs.  These are the food (pointing to the extra beads and pipe cleaners), and the kiddo needs to eat the food.

Extending the learning with these insect crafts

Okay, just creating this insect craft is a great thing to do. It’s got lots of fine motor skills, and playing around with thinking how to build stuff, but it also can be extended beyond the creation:

1. Create stories, reread the story up above that my three-year-old created. It’s a great way to build awareness of story structure and expand imagination.
2. Identify body parts. The head, thorax, abdomen, antennae, compound eyes, wings, and more can be identified with these.
3. Counting and skip counting (if you made multiple) as you count body parts or multiple body parts.

More science learning for kids

• How to make fake snow
• Nature walk: signs of animals
• Test Tube Science bag review
• Why do I slide faster on tall slides
• Food web project