Buggin' Out!

So, this is the best $2.00 I've spent all summer (Dollar Store bug catcher with bowl tongs)!

We're getting lots of use out of it. We found these two  by our hostas. Easy to scoop them since they were 'pre-occupied'...yeesh!

I like to 'opportunity teach'. When an opportunity comes up, I try to expand upon it by grabbing relevant/matching items- right on the spot. I really don't plan these types of things in advance. Heck, this entire activity (including bug catch time), was just under an hour..then done. 

When we caught these dragonflies, I did a Google image search on  free dragonfly print outs.
This took little time, 5 minutes to find/print.We looked at our live specimens with a magnifying glass, compared/contrasted and colored.

I then found her two relevant puzzles and we played with those- spending a bit more time on the dragonflies in the puzzles (more comparing with the two live specimens).

We love the Melissa and Doug magnet puzzle. She has to use her hand/eye coordination to manipulate the magnet net to scoop each insect up.

Last week we found this furry lil' guy and did the same thing.Here's a collection of our photos on our caterpillar (now in the cocoon stage)!

p.s. I know the title of this post isn't really accurate (bugs verses insects), but I couldn't resist.