This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Orkin Ecologist. All opinions are 100% mine.
Insects. Bugs. Creepy, crawly creatures. Some people fear them, but at Orkin, they study them. Here at Everything Mommyhood we did a little studying of our own at The Orkin Ecologist website. My 5 year old daughter and I enjoyed looking and learning about all of the creepy crawlers. We were most fascinated by the spiders, as we live in an urban area and we see SO many spiders where we live. They are just so busy this time of year and we always see them making their webs, so my daughter was so interested in learning about them. One of the spiders we see often, that I'm not too happy about is the black widow spider. Having two girls, ages 2 and 5, combined with playing outside often makes me nervous.
Black Widow spiders are small and don't look very frightening. They are black with a red hourglass shape on their back. They are scary because their bite contains venom, which you will need to seek medical treatment for. It's venom is 15 times stronger than that of a rattlesnake!!! The worst part is these are typically outdoor spiders and they like any outdoor structures, like the kids playhouse, patio furniture, fences and more. If you see one, run the other direction, don't mess with it!
I even took a little video of my daughter and I talking about them!
We even took it as far as making a small poster about some other spiders that we read about too. She enjoyed cutting and gluing the different spiders that we read about at Orkin. She asked her preschool teacher if she could bring this in on Halloween to share with the class too, which she is so super excited about.
After we got done reading about spiders, we moved on to ants. Living in Mississippi, we see a lot of different kinds of ants. Fire ants, sugar ants, and many others.
We read about Bullet ants that have a sting that is compared to being shot with a bullet, army ants that can make colonies with as many as a million ants, and many other different ants that all work together socially, as a team.
We decided to do a Eek-ologist project with some food and make some Ants on a Log! My daughter was not impressed with the name at all, but I assured her that it would be a fun project. These are perfect to serve at a Halloween party, or even for an activity at a Halloween party for the kids to make. Plus it's healthy, so it's a win win for everyone!
Grab some peanut butter, celery, raisins, and a kid safe knife and get to work!
1. Clean your celery and cut up into easy to handle, kid friendly pieces.
2. Spread some peanut butter into the canal of the celery.
3. Add some ants, I mean raisins…and voila! Ants on a Log!!!
The Orkin Ecologist site is a fantastic educational resource for both novice and experienced science lovers. I recommend checking it out, with or without your kids. I think your kids would be super interested, even if they don't like insects!
Leave me a comment if you visit the Orkin Ecologist site and let me know what you think!