The Marvellous Activity Book of Bug Box

Each year, just before school breaks up, Rory and I like to sit down and write a bucket list of all the things we’d like to do over the summer holidays.  If you’d like a peak at this year’s choices to inspire you, have no fear we shared it in a blog and there’s a free printable of it!  One of the activities in our Summer Challenge is to go on a Mini Beast Hunt.  This one is always extremely popular with the boys who are keen to see how many different mini beasts they can find and it’s popular with Mummy because it means they are enjoying being outdoors.

We were absolutely delighted when we were kindly gifted a copy of The Marvellous Activity Book of Bug Box to enhance our bug hunting experience.  Bug Box are an online entomology store.  That’s the branch of zoology concerned with the study of insects and not etymology the study of the origin of words!  As well as selling a wide variety of healthy invertebrates, the founder Cameron Reardon has also written a fantastic activity book for children all about insects.  He created the book with the help of secondary school teachers ensuring that it is linked to the primary curriculum.  In fact, it’s now also being used in many classrooms in Wales as part of the education curriculum for children.

The Marvellous Activity Book of Bug Box is split into a variety of sections each of which has a different educational theme of either Maths, English, Science or Outdoors.  Rory was keen to jump straight to the Outdoors Section and to do the craft activity which was making an Insect Hotel.  The instructions are clearly laid out and easy to follow and Rory quite happily made the hotel by himself.  I really liked that it was made out of recycled materials other than a few splodges of PVA glue.  We have made a single layer hotel at the moment but Rory is very keen to add to it and build a bigger hotel.  We’ll have to start drinking more apple juice so he can have the cartons!

The other Outdoors activity is going on a Bug Hunt.  The Bug Hunt has been structured into a science experiment with an aim, method, prediction, results and conclusion.  The aim is to find out about the habitat of a woodlouse and is clearly structured to help children go through each step of a scientific experiment.  Children are also encourage to look out for other kinds of mini beasts along the way too.  We really enjoyed doing this and Rory liked writing down something for each stage like a real scientist would.

The Maths and English parts of the book would be fantastic for a rainy day or if you need a calming down activity.  Rory really enjoyed solving the Maths calculations which you then use to complete an insect themed colour by numbers.  In the English section, I really liked how rather than just having a fact section to read, the words of the facts are jumbled and you need to unscramble them to discover the facts which adds an extra element of fun.  There’s also a Maths puzzle and a wordsearch to solve too.

There are also two science activities to complete.  The first is labeling the parts of a spider.  I have to admit I had no idea that there is a part of a spider called a pedipalp until we did this which was great as it encouraged us to go away and find out more.  The other science activity is all about life cycles.  In school children often learn about the life cycles of frogs and butterflies so it was really great to see the life cycle of a different creature as the book focuses on the life cycle of a ladybird.

The Marvellous Activity Book of Bug Box is a really great way to explore the fascinating world of bugs.  Rory and I both really enjoyed completing the activities and we would really recommend it to other mini beast hunters!

If you’d like to find out more about Bug Box UK, you can find them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook!