Complete Guide to Insect Study for Grade-Schoolers

We just concluded our study of insects and oh boy, both Mavi and Vito had a wonderful time learning all about these creatures!  We’re having zoology (animal study) for this month (12 Months of Montessori Series) and I’m going to give you a complete guide on how to study insects with your kids.

What is an insect?

Start your unit study by learning what is an insect. Put it simply, it is an animal that has 6 legs with segmented bodies. And yes please, spiders are definitely NOT insects.  Now for Mavi to have a wider understanding of this subject, I've set up a sorting activity of the 4 major groups of the Arthropods.  Since we've done this last year, Mavi has a prior knowledge of the difference between insects and spiders.  He got confused with the crab though, if its either arachnids or crustaceans LOL.  Initially he placed it in the Arachnids   These animal figures were from Safari Toob Insects and Insect Lore.

The Life Cycle of an Insect

Now after learning about the animals that belong to the insect family,  we looked into the life cycles of an insect.  Here we talked about the insects that undergo “complete metamorphosis” and those with “incomplete metamorphosis”.  Note complete metamorphosis means, it has the stages of: egg-larva-pupa-adult. 

Materials here are Insect Lore Life Cycle of Butterfly and Ladybug

Parts of an Insect 

We also learned about the different parts of an insect. I have a separate post on this one and you read it here or click the image below.

Insect Habitats and Bug Hunting

I created guides on hunting insects in different habitats.  We have insects found in woodlands (in the forest), those found in rivers and lakes, the ones found everywhere and in the meadows/fields.  We used these guides as we go “bug hunting”.

We were able to catch a few insects like ladybird (escaped from our net after a few hours), this unidentified insect in the outdoor stairs and ants.

Vito was fascinated with ants! He also had a separate insect study for toddlers. 

Vito’s Insect Study

Previous Post on Insects

• The World of Arthropods Part One
• The world of Arthropods Part Two
• FREE Arthropods Chart
• Insect Activities for Preschooler
• Life Cycle of a Butterfly for Preschoolers
• Grasshoppers
• Parts of a Ladybird
• Life Cycle of a Ladybug

Thank you so much for taking time to read this post. I hope that I was able to give you enough ideas so you can also jumpstart your own insect study with your kids.

If you need some learning materials about insects you can also buy the following from my printable shop:
The Arthropods Learning Pack
The Insect
The Ant
The Grasshopper
The Dragonfly

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler

Montessori-Inspired Parts of an Insect

We are having a blast looking into the world of insects! In this post, I will show you how we are learning the different parts of an insects as well as the source of our materials.

Seen on the picture are the materials we are using to learn about the insect’s body parts.  The insects that we examined here are ants, butterfly, ladybird, grasshopper and dragonfly.  As you can see, this is NOT really hands-on because of two factors:

• The absence of these insects (except for ants and ladybird) during the time we have this study.  No grasshoppers (tropical country) and no butterfly at all!
• We cannot dissect ladybird and ants.  They’re just too tiny!

With these, we just used our nomenclature cards and animal figures.  Speaking of animal figures, I highly recommend Safari Toobs Insects.  You can easily demonstrate the body parts because of the details in the figures.

Resources in the picture:

• FREE Insects and Spider Silhouette Cards.
• Insect cards from my Arthropods Pack
• FREE Butterfly Nomenclature Cards
• Grasshopper Nomenclature Cards
• Ants Nomenclature Cards
• Caterpillar Nomenclature Cards
• Dragonfly Nomenclature Cards
• Insect Nomenclature Cards
• Usborne Bugs Book
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Montessori Butterfly Puzzle
• Montessori Wasp Puzzle
• Safari Toob Insects

Nomenclature Cards

We worked on the entire nomenclature cards in the span of one week.  Because of the repetition of the activity, Mavi was able to identify the similarities of these insects, like:

• They have segmented bodies: head, thorax and abdomen
• 6 legs
• Most have antennae

Each nomenclature card comes with a definition booklet of the body parts.  Mavi loves reading our booklets (this is a perfect way to let your child improve their reading skills!)

Montessori Puzzles
I purchased these puzzles before I had Vito.  We used it to identify the different parts of an insect and worked on it


Mavi loves to trace the puzzles and made his own version of butterfly.
The puzzle was also enjoyed by Vito.  He loves butterfly (even if he hasn’t seen one yet) and chose to work on the puzzle.

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Parts of a Flower

Oh I couldn’t resist not having a flower study! Daffodils are just everywhere and knowing me, I just have to grab this opportunity to review our parts of the flower and use our flower puzzle! (My puzzle is from Tower High Learning)

So what to do with all these daffodils that Mavi picked from our backyard? Dissect them!

And here’s how we investigated each part.

I get lots of “ooohs” and “aaahs” from Mavi. I love it!

This is how I do it at home and Mavi loves hands-on! 

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More activities here from my Pinterest board!

FLOWER BOARD Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Flower Unit on Pinterest.

Montessori Landforms Cards

** Contains affiliate links **

Here’s my presentation of the landform cards.  Although this was not the first time Mavi encountered the cards, he was more than excited to use our new Montessori materials because this time, it has textures!  Plus, it helped that we have this Learning Resources Transportation counters to use with our cards!  You can get this from any Montessori shop or from Amazon.  (Mine is from Tower High learning)

If you want you want to see our introduction to landforms, read it here. 

I created the description cards that you see in the photo.  I love doing this and let Mavi read :)  It is my way of letting him practice reading, not just in books.

Now the transportation counters helped a LOT in my presentation.  It helped me demonstrate where’s the land and water in the cards.  Such a perfect tool for visual presentation! 

And they are so cute!  They’re really worth-it! So here are my additional materials to help me with the topic.

Here’s the 6 landform materials (out of 8).  Aren’t they so beautiful?

We’ll do more of this in the coming weeks as we explore countries and continents via Five in a Row.  Hope you like this post!

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[Tried and Tested] Tower High Learning

I came across Tower High Learning through random search in the internet for affordable Montessori puzzles.  I am so happy that I found another shop in the UK that sells Montessori materials.  As I skim through their online shop, I’m surprised that they offer a waay more affordable price than any shop I’ve encountered!  Excitedly, I contacted their costumer service for inquiries and they responded promptly to all my queries.  Marie, who runs the business is very friendly and easy to talk to!  So without hesitation I purchased a few puzzles for Vito and Mavi to work on this year. 

And guess what? They arrived after 2 days!! How cool is that??  To think that I just paid for regular shipping. Amazing isn’t it?

And yes, nothing beats the smell of new Montessori materials, waiting to be opened!

My botany puzzles!! I regret not getting the seed and roots!

  My Zoology puzzles:  bird, turtle and frog.  Must save for the the fish and butterfly.

I purchased this version of which there’s a skeleton presentation on the board of the puzzle.

 

And here’s my beautiful beautiful Asia Continent Map puzzle. Shining, shimmering… splendid!

And yes all those little tiny pieces all sits well on its board. Love it!  Wishlist: must get the control map next time!

Ahhh… oh how I love the puzzles! They’re on the lower price range but they were more than perfect! Flat, and all the pieces fitted well.

I have to start my “wishlist” for Christmas.  I can’t wait till  my next purchase when my funds are enough.

So don’t forget to checkout Tower High Learning if you are in Europe and looking for affordable Montessori materials.

 

**This is not a paid post or review.  Just wanted to share this amazing shop that sells affordable Montessori materials to Moms out there that have tight budget like me!