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Spring Insect Study

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We received the Nancy Larson Science curriculum for free in exchange for a review on Teach Beside Me. All opinions are my own and I am not being compensated further for this review. Affiliate links are included in this post.

We have has so much fun with our new science curriculum this month. We recently started using Nancy Larson Science Level 1 and have been just having a blast. We decided to jump ahead a little in the curriculum and go right to the insect study. The science kit comes with an Insect Lore butterfly garden and a ladybug land.   The insect study is actually the last unit in the book, but my kids just couldn’t wait when they saw the kits to raise the insects!  Since you have to send away for the insect larva with these kits, I ordered the Butterflies and the Ladybugs about a week apart from each other so they wouldn’t both be ready to release at the same time.

Insect Study

If you have never raised butterflies or caterpillars, you should definitely try it sometime. Your kids will love it. I loved it just as much as they did. Each day you could see changes in them and watch them grow.

insect life cycles

What ended up being so amazing about this whole insect study was that we were learning about the life cycles of the different insects as we watched them grow right in our house. The kids were just completely fascinated by the whole process. I have never seen my daughter so excited about science as I have this month. The Nancy Larson Science workbooks go through each of the stages of various insects. We learned about butterflies and ladybugs as well as grasshoppers, moths, ants, and even spiders (comparing them to insects). In the workbooks it has places for the students to read and or follow along as you read to them. Mt kids wanted to take turns reading the paragraphs out loud as we went along. Then there are questions about the reading as well as activities to apply what you learned- drawing and coloring pages, some insect toys, learning cards and books, and of course the live insects.

insect nature study

We also have a few sets of the Insect Lore life cycle models that we pulled out and played with all week long. These are not included in the Nancy Larson set, but I was so glad we had them for this unit! There are a whole bunch of different sets and my kids have loved playing with them for years now!

insects

Over the past week we have released both the butterflies and the ladybugs.  We had so much fun caring for them and having them in our house, but it was also a blast to release them and let them crawl all over us!

We are just loving our new science and can’t wait to see what we will learn next!

Even More Spring Insect Study Ideas:

Paper Insect Display
Build a Worm Tower
Insect Hotel
Pitfall Insect Trap
Water Strider Insect Science
Origami Firefly Paper Circuit

 

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