Insect Collection and Display

I mentioned before how much I liked making an insect collection when I was in sixth grade, and I think I enjoyed it even more this time. The children did most of the actual hunting, but it was so exciting every time we found a new insect! There were a few other insects we would have liked to find: a katydid, a stick insect, a centipede (not an insect, but we still wanted one), and a bigger moth. But we really got most of the things we hoped to get, and we love the way our collection looks now!

We labeled our specimens the best we could using our Insect and Butterfly Guides, but we may have gotten some wrong—sometimes it's so hard to tell! But it was fun trying to figure out what we'd found, anyway. We decided not to include orders and classes and scientific names, for the sake of simplicity (we liked how the collection looked better without large labels).

We ordered several things from Home Science Tools which made collecting even simpler. Here are the supplies we got:

Basic insect collecting kit. The spreading board was really useful, as were the forceps, and the pins of course. And the killing jar worked great. I hate the killing part (I always feel so sad for the poor little insects!) so it is nice to know that it's quick and painless. You can order more of the ethyl acetate if you run out (we didn't get even close, though).

Nets. We got a kid one and a standard one and they both worked well. We liked the longer handle best.

Display box. First we just had this basic box, but it started to fill up and when our specimens were looking so great, we decided we might actually want to display them. So this nicer box is perfect!

We took the glass lid off of the box for the other pictures, to get rid of the reflection on it, but I think the collection looks even nicer under the glass. We like it so much that we're going to hang it up on the wall!