All Bugs Are Insects, But Not All Insects Are Bugs

Today I accompanied Henry's 1st grade class on their field trip to Tennant Lake. What a perfect day to explore nature.

Our favorite instructor with the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, Birdman, was in charge of the field trip. He's wonderful and we're so fortunate to learn about insects and birds from such a cool guy!

Henry was chosen to come to the front of the room and become an insect! We even learned a song about an insect's head, thorax, abdomen, six wiggly legs, eyes, and antenna. Then we headed out on the boardwalk over Tennant Lake to explore water insects. Each kid was given a net to scoop up insects and then we observed them in buckets of water. The kids found a water boatman, damselfly nymph, caddisfly larva, water strider, leech, pond snail, back swimmer, dragonfly nymph, bladderwort, mosquito pupae, water mite, and a big ball of salamander eggs.

Henry was very excited to find a water boatman. His favorite water insect!

Henry with his teacher. It was a bit windy out there on the boardwalk!
Rome's dad tried dipping Rome in the water to catch some bugs. Hmmm... I don't think that's what Birdman meant when he sent us out to do some pond dipping.
After learning about water insects, we headed out to the field to learn about those insects which are on land.
Each kid was given an insect net and a little box with a microscope in it. They found ladybird beetles (aka, ladybugs - but they're not bugs, they're beetles; did you know that beetles make up the majority of the insect world?), spiders, flies, mosquitoes, aphids, and other insects that I can't remember the names!

As the field trip was nearing the end, the kids put on their ant antenna and followed Birdman back to the nature center.

I'm glad I got to go along with Henry and his class today.