What Are Your Insects Up To?

Fact: Little people are fascinated by little things.

Your child can learn so much from studying the comings and goings in the lives of the insects in your very own yard.

We have child-friendly insect magnifying glasses that are perfect for enhancing your child’s view of the little critters that make up such an important part of our ecosystem.

What foods do they naturally choose? Where do they live? Do they live in large communities, or spend most of their time alone?

There are endless activities that can be based around the study of insects and even favourite songs such as “That Ants Go Marching” and nursery rhymes such as “Ladybird, Ladybird” take on a whole new level of meaning after you have watched thousands of ants marching one by one or waved goodbye to a ladybird as it flies away home.

There are safe experiments that even the youngest child can take part in, such as sprinkling a pinch of sugar or some cake crumbs along a line of ants and watching how their activity changes.

It can be an enlightening experience to follow one ant from a food source, all the way along the ant super highway, to the point where it enters the nesting hole. What an epic journey for such a little creature!

This can also help with your child’s understanding of analogies of insect behaviour that are sometimes used in nursery stories.

Check out our colourful Insect Magnifying Glass and open your child’s eyes to the amazing world of insects.

Holidays – Keep Those Kids Busy

Most children are used to relatively structured days and activities during the school term, at pre-school or school, and can be left a little lost during the holidays. Holidays do tend to set off the “I’m bored” in kids and leave mums frazzled and annoyed.

Avoiding this frustration is as simple as organising a minimum of one structured or semi-structured activity per day. Depending on the age or dependence of your children, will depend on your level of involvement; if you’d like them happily and safely occupied whilst you attend to something you need to, make sure you structure in activities they can do mostly unsupervised as well.

Activities may include:

• Craft - cutting and pasting, painting, drawing, playdough;
• Chalk drawings - either on a footpath, garage floor or the side of the house;
• Building a cubbyhouse using sheets, blankets and the furniture;
• Bug and insect catching;
• Set up a game, challenge or obstacle course (indoor or outdoor); and
• Research - have the kids research a topic or subject they’re interested in.

Other activities that keep the kids busy and wear them out include bike rides along a specific route or excursions – particularly if you can use public transport, as this makes the day just a little more exciting for them. Or how about exploring the neighbourhood on bike or foot?

If it helps, set up a timetable of activities similar to that of a school holiday program. Get the kids involved and help you set up the program. The structure will help lessen the school holiday chaos and the kids will have no reason to be bored.