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fun stuff inside: books, activities, crafts, websites and much more!

Featured Picture

Behold a Snail
Title: Behold a Snail
By: Lucas Fancher

Bugzilla week 3

Books

Fiction
Nonfiction
Picture Books & Readers

Movies

Ant Bully
Antz
Bugs Life
Honey I Shrunk the Kids
James and the Giant Peach

Websites

Alien Empire
Build a Monster Bug
Growing Up Creepy
World of Giant Insects
Yuckiest Site of the Internet

Fun Activities

Ant Maze (pdf) Help an ant get back to the anthill with her grain of corn.
 
Giant Attack Bugs Project: This project is adapted from Bats, Butterflies and Bugs: A Book of Action Toys by S. Adams Sullivan.
1. Print out copies of the giant attack mosquito patterns (pdf) and print onto card stock.
2. Have kids color the bugs, cut them out, and fold up the wings. will enjoy gliding them or chasing each other with them outside.
 
I Saw a Little Bug (pdf) Can you find the names of 15 different bugs hidden in this puzzle?

Bugzilla Crafts

Bizarre Egg Carton Caterpillars
Insect Headbands
Make Your Own Compound Eye

Extremely Buggy Facts

Daddy-long-legs look like long-legged spiders but are actually relatives of spiders.

Millipedes cannot hurt people. They do look similar to centipedes (their sometimes dangerous relatives), but with two big differences: (1) millipedes have chewing mouthparts and (2) millipedes have two pairs of legs for each body segment (centipedes have only one pair of legs per segment.

Cockroaches have been hated and feared for centuries.

Dragonflies have as many as 30,000 lenses in each eye.

The fossil dragonfly, Meganeura, that lived about 250 million years ago was probably the largest insect ever. Its wingspan was over two feet.

The heaviest insect is the goliath beetle in Africa (weighs 1/4 pound and is 5 inches long). They belong to the same family (scarab beetles as the eastern Hercules beetle, which is about 2 inches long including the horn.

The largest butterfly is the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing from New Guinea (an endangered species), with a wingspan of 11 inches.

The largest moth is Owlet moth of tropical America, with a wingspan of 18 inches.

Egyptian mythology included the following insects:

    Dung beetles or scarabs-jewelry, dung rolling reminded Egyptians of the sun (which they called Ra) rolling across the sky each day.
    Buprestid beetles-wood borers are the symbol of a myth, where a goddess (Isis) brought a warrior Odyssus back to life
    Click beetles' backs are shaped like the shied of ancient Egyptian soldiers.
    Biting flies were symbols of determination, perseverance, valor, gold medals in the shape of the flies were given to soldiers.
    Grasshoppers, dragonflies and bees were used in jewelry, as a symbol of life on the Nile.
    Praying mantis were a symbol of funerals and the afterlife.

Jokes

What bug works for the CIA? The spyder
What do you get when you cross a bug with an orange? Beetlejuice
What has 45 legs, 32 eyes and 65 teeth? I don't know either, but it's crawling up your back!
What do you get if you cross a tarantula with a rose? I'm not sure, but I wouldn't try to smell it!
Why did the tarantula stare at the hairbrush? He thought it was a mirror.
Where does a 3,000-pound beetle sleep? Anywhere it wants to.

 
Birmingham Public Library 2100 Park Place Birmingham, Alabama 35203 (205) 226-3600