Bed Bug Bites
Bug Bites and Bee Stings: Raise your hand if you have ever seen an insect? Let children talk and say what they have seen. Introduce insects using models and posters. Insects have 6 legs and an exoskeleton (shell on the outside). Raise your hand if you have ever been bitten or stung by an insect? Let them talk about things that stung or bit them. Spiders, ticks, fleas, mites and lice belong to a group of animals called arachnids and they have 8 legs.
Discuss insects & arachnids that bite or sting (ex. bee, hornet, wasp, bumble bee, ant (fire ant & red velvet ant) flea, bed bug, chigger, louse, tick, and gnat. Discuss how some bites make you itch and some animals can carry diseases. Ticks bite you, suck your blood, and are most frequent in May and June. Female mosquitoes suck your blood to lay eggs in water. Bed bugs bite and suck blood and make you itch. Baby chiggers make you itch. They digest your skin with their saliva, lap it up, and fall off in 3 days.
Bees nest in old trees or hives, collect nectar and pollen, sting and leave the stinger and poison sac that pumps poison into you until you remove it. Make sure you remove the stinger and sac. Wasps’ are reddish brown, sting and nests under porches and buildings. Hornets are black and white, sting and make football nests in trees. Fire ants make tall hill that may go 15 feet deep. They bite you and it blisters and can be serious if you are allergic. Yellow Jackets are yellow with black stripes, sting, and live underground or in stumps. Spiders such as the black widow and brown recluse (violin spider) hide in dark places and can bite you if disturbed and make you very sick. Many spiders and scorpions like woodpiles for homes.
Remedy for bites & stings: Put ice on it or a mixture of baking soda and water. Witch hazel helps to eliminate itching. If you were going for a walk in the woods, how would you dress? Always wear shoes and socks, long pants, long sleeve shirt, cap or scarf, insect repellent with less than 10% deet, no bright colors or perfume, cover food, take water and don’t drink soda from an open can. Yellow jackets like them! Don’t swat at them or run around because that makes them angry. Move quickly and quietly away.
MATERIALS: Models of the animals: ticks, mosquito, ants, brown recluse spider, black widow, honeybee, posters of insects and arachnids, samples of larva, cocoons, nests etc.
Bug Jokes List
ACTIVITIES: Let children examine models of insects and spiders, their metamorphosis, and the posters of insects and arachnids. Children sing and act out “This is a Song about Sammy” using insects such as bee, grasshopper, butterfly, and ant. Share bug Jokes. Let children watch power point program on insects and spiders showing examples of them and what the bites look like.