Here’s a project that’s well received by children aged four to eight. After a walk to the school garden to look for insects, especially grasshoppers, it can be fun for them to make small pretend grasshoppers to take home as “pets.”
This project gives the youngsters a chance to develop their fine motor control and their cutting, drawing, and coloring skills (particularly if they color both the printed and unprinted sides of their grasshopper). At the same time, they will be developing a better understanding of the characteristic three-part body structure of adult insects.
Encourage them to sequence and glue the parts together in a realistic order – if possible. Use the new science vocabulary frequently since their wonderful capacity for language learning will allow them to remember the new words readily, especially if they hear them in an interesting context. Demonstrate how a length of yarn can be tied around the animal’s thorax to create a leash. Show them how to make the grasshoppers “hop” by moving the leash up and down quickly, and suggest that they name their creatures. Invite them to use their imaginations and take the grasshoppers on adventures – in the classroom and beyond!
One other note: this is a fine autumn project to do when you have a “buddy program” in which older children are paired with younger students to work together on some sort of project. In this case, they can craft grasshoppers!
Here’s what the actual worksheet looks like. Below you’ll find the link to the PDF.
And this is the PDF: Grasshopper to Assemble EB 2018