Exploring Bugs and Beyond

Exploring with Guidebooks!

Our home library became an extension of the outdoors with today's activity. We even play around with a NASA data set.

Finding a Bug

This morning the children saw an exciting critter on the window and immediately ran for some field identification guides to figure out what it might be.

Identify that guy!

Turns out, it's a harmless little crane fly!

Here is a link with information about them from the Florida extension office.

https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/nassauco/2017/06/26/q-find-large-mosquito-looking-insects-house/

Use References with Pictures

Soon the children were immersed in their reference books, having a good time reading and telling each other what they learned about cool exotic bugs. The reference books they gathered from our home library were mostly designed for young children, with large pages, high quality illustrations and vivid descriptions. These vibrant books encouraged them to engage in the activity.

Relating to Children's Programming

Once they found an image of a Dung Beetle, it dominated their conversation. They remembered an episode of Puffin Rock about dung beetles (season 2, episode 13) and had fun checking facts that they remembered from the episode with their reference book.

When they found a picture of a Water Bear (Tardigrade) in one of their books, they recalled an episode of Octonauts (season 3 episode 2) where they encounter water bears in the extreme heat of an underwater volcano.

Space Connection

Here is an image of a tardigrade from the NASA image gallery. Tardigrades can enter a dormant state that allows them to survive through extremes of heat and vacuum. 

Has NASA sent other critters to space? Yes, just look at all the work done with Fruit Flies! You can even search the transcriptomes of samples that flew in spaceflight with the NASA GeneLab, and with visualization tools ( https://visualization.genelab.nasa.gov/data/GLDS-3 ) You can compare ground control with spaceflight and view heat maps like these. Younger children will only see pretty colors but older children and teens can begin to notice patterns in the data.

 Can you think up study you want to do with fruit flies in space? Here is a list of hardware available to conduct experiments with drosophila in spaceflight: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/research/space-biosciences/drosophila-containers-and-platforms

Get outside!

Grab your magnifying glass, run outside, and find even more fun critters.

We ran through a boardwalk trail and found fewer bugs than we expected.

When we went back to a neighborhood we found more bugs than when we were out and about. Here is a photo of our toddler as she found bugs to observe with her magnifying glass. 

Note: they don't have to hold the magnifying glass "right" to have fun learning. 

Book recommendations: 

Here are a couple of fun children's books about bugs with beautiful pictures and illustrations:

What's that Bug? By Nan Froman, illustrated by Julian Mulock. This book is filled with high quality, colorful illustrations of insects. 

If you want a picture book filled with colorized scanning electron micrographs, look for Bugs in the Backyard by Camilla de la Bedoyere. 

We also love the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Florida.

Here is our 8 year old looking for bugs in this field guide. It is a small size that easily fits into a purse when you're out and about. It also covers plants, fish, birds, and what to see in the night sky, like the phases of the moon.

Have fun exploring - on Earth and beyond!