Preassessment and Findings

Whenever the bug enclosure is set up for preschool, the children gravitate toward it.

When there are books about insects in the reading center, at least one of them gets read. During

outdoor play on May 14th, I watched many children hunt for bugs. Children kept asking me for

“bug catchers” (the little containers with lids). M. asked me if I could help him find different

kinds of bugs, because he could only find roly-polies. He said he caught a mommy and a daddy

roly-poly. H. said he found a really tiny red bug. He called it a “corndall” and said it had two

legs and seven teeth. Many of the children were counting bugs and carried their bug catchers for

the rest of the day. E. and S. asked me to help them find ladybugs. C. also wanted to find a

ladybug, but all we could find was a dead one. He was still satisfied, but then he found another

bug and trapped a bead for it to play on. When E. saw that there were worms in the sensory table,

she grabbed some of them without hesitation. S. and C. were so engaged in looking at worms

that they didn’t want to leave them to have snack. Similarly, P. didn’t finish his snack because he

wanted to go outside and look at bugs.

The children know what roly-polies, ladybugs, and ants are. C. knew that some bugs fly

because he said that we have to look for bugs in the air. M. knew that different bugs live in

different places. He said that lady bugs live in bushes and ants dig and hide in the ground. E.

knew about how bees pollinate flowers to help them reproduce. The other children might not

know this, though. The children know that worms wiggle and that they are slimy. This is why G.

likes them, but also why R. does not like them. C. knew all about grasshoppers and how they

“fling” themselves. H. kept shaking up his bugs when he caught them in a container, and he

didn’t think this would hurt them.

 The children need to know that insects have six legs and one or two sets of wings, and

bugs are different than insects. Lady bugs are beetles, and worms technically aren’t bugs. They

need to understand how to treat bugs, even though some of them have exoskeletons to protect

themselves. The children need to know what bugs do and what they eat so fear of bugs can be

eased. There are many opportunities available for them to learn about bugs, indoors and

outdoors.