Flying Creatures: A First Look at Insects

This week in Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, we learned about classification of insects, exoskeletons, eyes, head, antennae, the three types of mouths, the thorax, and the abdomen, did notebooking pages and drew an insect with every feature that makes an insect an insect.
We got an up close look at the molting process and even captured two insects that molted right before our eyes.
We did a Try This Experiment to see how temperature affects insect activity and a "Lazarus Experiment" to demonstrate how the spiracles on an insect's body function to help it breathe and close to prevent it from drowning.
The boys thought they really drowned their insect and were skeptical that this experiment would work. Some salt and a little bit of time, and their insect was back to life crawling around again.
Insect Pitfall Trap
We dug a hole and made a made a pitfall trap to catch insects. We checked after 24 hours, but no insects yet. We will check again next time we go camping.
We found some interesting insects in our woods and discovered one of them to be the Eyed Click Beetle. This is a beneficial beetle that eat larvae from wood boring beetles. We had some fun with it because when it feels threatened, it will click and flip into the air.
Insect Zoo
We made an insect zoo to observe our garden friendly insect, but will release it in a few days and use our zoo to observe other insects.
To see other lessons we have done in this series, click here.

5 comments

  1. You are incredibly brave to do things with insects! I am not sure I will be able to do anything like that! My daughter and I are going to be doing this book in the next few weeks and neither of us is looking forward to studying the insect section! Great job!

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  2. It looks like you all are having so much fun with this study. My daughter would love to have an insect zoo. :)

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  3. That sounds like FUN!

    Janet from the Crew.

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  4. This looks like fun. I love Apologia Science!

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  5. These look like some really cool experiments. :)

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