Objective

• Students will understand the impact of insects on our life.
• Students will be able to label the major parts of an insect.
• Students will understand complete metamorphosis.

Materials

• Pen
• Paper
• Camera (Optional)
• Magnify Lens
• Insect Worksheet

Background

In nature, springtime is known for being when babies are born. During April and May deer, raccoons, possums, coyotes and many more wild animals are having babies. Fish and frogs are laying eggs. Many insects are laying eggs too!

Have you ever noticed all the insects on a warm spring day? Bees, flies, butterflies and many more. That’s because they have a lot of work to do to survive and to make more insects.

Did you know that there are more insects in the world than any other animals? Way more!!! The human population is over 7 billion. That’s a seven followed by nine zeros. But there are over 10 quintillion insects on earth. That’s a 10 followed by 18 zeros! The weight of all the ants in the world is equal to the weight of all of the people in the world.

Insects can come in many shapes and sizes, but most insects have three major body parts: Head, thorax and abdomen. Like us, the brain, mouth, eyes and other parts are located on the head. The thorax is where the legs and wings are attached. All insects have six legs. The heart, digestive organs and many other organs are located in the abdomen.

Insects have different types of life cycles but the most common one is complete metamorphosis. Below is a diagram of this:

Many insects spend the winter as a pupa. When it warms up, the pupa comes out of hibernation and the adult emerges to start the lifecycle.

Insects affect our lives every day. They have a huge impact on the production of our food. Farmers try to control the insects to keep them from harming our food supply and they do their best to avoid hurting the insects that are helpful. Understand that insects may bug us but our planet depends on them for life!

Activity

Go outside and see how many different types of insects that you can find. Turn over rocks, get on your knees and look in the grass, and look at the bottom of leaves. See if you can find all stages of complete metamorphosis: egg, lava, Pupae and adult!

• Draw one of the insects that you find and see if you can label the parts.
• Draw the life cycle stage(s) of an insect that you found. Which stages did you find and which stages did you not find?

Complete the Insect Worksheet to test your knowledge about insects.

Supplemental Videos

How a Caterpillar Becomes a Butterfly Provided by SciShow Kids

Butterfly: A Life Provided by National Geographic

Resources

The Bugs of the World Could Squish Us All provided by FiveThirtyEight