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Bugs Painting, Literally!
October 28, 2009 by Rachel
Filed under cheap, free & easy, feature
I love living in Texas, we have outdoor learning fun year-round! We are doing preschool at home this year and I think this was one of my kids favorite activities so far. We went outside to one of our flower pots by the pool where we can easily find bugs, frogs, geckos, etc. gathered a couple worms, grubs, a beetle and an earwig. Going on a bug hunt was fun! Then we dipped them in paint and watched them move, even more fun!
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Supplies needed:
Half a dozen or so different types of bugs
Tweezers, paint covered bugs are slippery!
Different colors of water soluble paint – so the bugs can live through this experience.
Paper
What to do: drop an insect into paint, drop them on the paper and repeat with different bugs and colors.
Learning Opportunities:
Make predictions about which bugs would be the fastest. Were they? We predicted that the beetle would be the fastest. The paint, however, made the beetle really sluggish while the worms, if they were really wet, would move very fast across the paper. As they dried a bit they slowed down considerably.
Make a graph of the fastest bugs and their accomplishments, chart the fastest and the slowest bugs. Does the bugs speed change if you mix the paint with water or with oil?
Dip a bug in blue paint and drop it where there previously was a red or yellow bug trail, does the new bug’s squirming introduce new colors by mixing the paints?
How do the various bugs move? What does a worm do to move compared to a grub or a beetle? Can you see the foot prints of the bugs?
What does the bug do when touched? Does it curl up into a ball? Does it bunch itself up? Does it run? Does it freeze?
How are bugs different from animals? people? cars?
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Hope you enjoy exploring with paint and bugs!
Bianca on Thu, 29th Oct 2009 12:53 pm
Oh my…I have an unhealthy FEAR of worms and anything worm-like! I can’t imagine doing this! But I am curious…what did you do with the bugs when you were done? Wash them off and set them free????
Rachel on Thu, 29th Oct 2009 1:06 pm
Haha! You want the truth… I worked hard to keep the bugs alive during our activity, using water soluble paints, etc. We then talked about how bugs are beneficial to plants and put them in one of our house plants (a small tree)… where they were immediately devoured by fire ants. I didn’t know we had a colony that had moved inside during all this rain. That’s what I get for keeping plants near the door. We discussed death, and it was NOT the ending I had anticipated to our bug lesson. I HATE having bugs in the house! And no, we did not paint with ants.