Other Insect Crafts

We made a whole hive-ful of origami bees one day. We used a book from the library that had patterns for several origami insects, but you can find some similar instructions here. Here are some harder origami insects you could make. Maybe we'll attempt those sometime.

We made dragonflies by coloring clothespins with sharpies, and then gluing waxed paper wing shapes inside the clothespins. They went fast and were quite fun to make. There are lots of variations of this craft online--I liked that we didn't have to get out the paint for ours. :) But this one with pipe cleaner wings is really cute, as is this one.

Daisy had to make matching mommy-and-baby ones with some tiny clothespins, of course. :)

This is a little model of how insects move their wings: not by muscles within the wings themselves, like birds, but by contracting and flexing their thorax to make the wings vibrate. There is a lesson plan, and instructions for this model, here.