Print out coloring pages from assorted educational sites for insect projects. For example, print out pages featuring assorted insects and go over a few facts about the insect, such as what they eat or how they nest, as well as insect body parts. Look for ant, bee, caterpillar, grasshopper, ladybug, snail and spider coloring pages. Also look for coloring pages of insects in nature or pages featuring multiple types of insects.
Play insect-themed games as a class project, such as "toss" games where children must toss plastic insects into ceramic pots. Play "Buzz, Buzz, Sting," instead of "Duck, Duck, Goose," or "Pin the Spider on the Web," instead of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," or substitute a hairy tarantula plush toy for a potato to play "Hot Potato."
Hide small plastic bugs in your classroom or outdoor area and instruct the children to use sticks to try to place as many bugs as they can in small plastic bags. The child they catches the most bugs is the winner; anyone that uses hands to touch the bugs is out.
Make insect crafts in your preschool classroom, such as lady bug puppet drinking straws. Pre-cut oval lady bug shapes out of Styrofoam plates and give the children red and black markers to decorate the oval. Help them with gluing googly eyes and black pipe cleaner bug antennae, as well as gluing the craft to a straw. Straws are meant to hold up puppets only; do not use them to drink out of.
Make paper chain caterpillars by helping the children link strips of green construction paper together. Help them glue pre-made green caterpillar heads to one end of the chain.
Make chocolate bar bugs by poking holes with wooden skewers on the length-wise sides of Milky Way or Mars bars. Help the children insert pull-and-peel licorice candy into these holes as bug legs. Use frosting to glue M &Ms to the candy bars as eyes and candy sprinkles as bug body patterns.
Cut soft cheese into rectangular blocks to make spiders -- press chow mein noodles or small pretzel sticks into the sides and on the top of the cheese as legs and antennae.
Crush graham crackers in a plastic sandwich bag and add chocolate sprinkles to make "ants in the sand."