Backyard Bug Hunt

Want to score major points with a kid who goes just plain buggy over bugs? Here’s a step-by-step guide to organizing a backyard bug hunt that your child will be talking about for weeks!

What you’ll need:
  • Plastic tweezers or a wooden spoon (so your child can pick up bugs without injuring them)
  • A magnifying glass
  • A flashlight (if you’re planning an after-dark bug hunt)
  • A clear jar or container with holes punched in the lid
  • A handful or two of slightly moist soil
  • Green leaves
  • Twigs
  • A bug identification guide

What to do:

  1. Before you head out on your backyard bug hunt, you’ll want to create a temporary home for the bugs that your child collects to observe. To do so, place a small amount of soil in the bottom of the jar or container, and then add a few twigs or leaves to the jar.
  2. Take your tweezers, your wooden spoon, your magnifying glass, and the jar and its lid to the backyard. (If you’re looking for bugs after dark, you’ll need your flashlight, too.)
  3. Start hunting for bugs. Check around flowers and bushes, the bases of trees, underneath rocks and sticks, and in the sand and soil.
  4. Once you’ve spotted a bug that you want to examine up close, collect it using a pair of tweezers or a wooden spoon and transfer the bug into a container. (Obviously, this is a highly delicate operation because you don’t want to crush the bug!)
  5. Examine the bug using your magnifying glass. See if you can identify the bug by using your bug identification guide.
  6. When you’re finished looking at the bug, set it free. Most bugs will die within a day or two of being kept in a jar.

Bug Art

Here are a few basic tips on creating homemade bugs using common household materials. Just remember: the best bugs of all are the ones you dream up using your own imagination!

  • Make a butterfly out of pipe cleaners and tissue paper. The tissue paper can be used to make the wings and the pipe cleaner can be used to make the butterfly’s body.
  • Make a ladybug using a single segment of an egg carton, a couple of glue-on googly eyes, and some red and black paint.

  • Make a caterpillar using half of the bottom of an egg carton. (Split the egg carton horizontally along the middle.) Paint your caterpillar green and add some googly eyes and some pipe cleaner antennae.

Bug Facts

Here are some fun facts that will help to tide your junior entomologist over until the two of you are able to pay a visit to the local library or science museum to dig up some more fabulous facts about bugs.

Did you know that…
  • The largest butterfly on the planet has a wingspan of 28 cm while the smallest has a wingspan of just over 1 cm?
  • Locusts are capable of eating their own weight in food in a day? (Imagine how much food you’d have to eat to be able to match that claim!)
  • A female cockroach is capable of producing up to 2 million offspring each year?