Gardens are full of interesting creatures that squirm, crawl, and fly. Your students can become garden detectives and try to discover who some of these visitors are and what they're up to. Challenge your kids to use their eagle eyes (and a hand lens, if possible) to look for signs of insect and other animal life. Don't forget to look in the soil, under leaves, on flowers, and in the air. After all, many creatures carry on their lives out of sight. What is the largest animal they find? The smallest? The most interesting? Encourage them to write about and draw pictures of their findings. Have them observe carefully to learn as much as possible about each living thing they discover: What does it feel like? How does it move? What does it eat? How does it interact with other living things? Where does it rest or hide? Does it seem to help, hurt, or not affect garden plants? Who visits the flowers? Are some flowers visited more often or only by certain creatures?

Create, or have groups of students create, a garden insect scavenger hunt. Your items will vary depending on when during a plant/insect unit you introduce the hunt, your grade range, and your garden or habitat type. Here are some sample items: Find ... a ground-dwelling beetle ... damage from a "sucking" insect ... a pollinator ... an insect egg or egg case ... an insect in a larval stage ... a predatory insect ... an insect-insect interaction ... an insect feeding on a plant. Students might carefully collect sample items and release them after the hunt, or simply draw or describe what they've found for each item.

For more activity ideas, check out:

Garden Sleuths
Pest Patrol
Inspiring Insect Sleuths