Gettin Buggy With It

On Friday my husband recorded A bug's Life for the kiddos. My boys are all excited about it and want to watch it every day. It's a cute movie but there are a couple of scenes where "stupid" and "shut up" are said. Whenever those scenes come up, the boys and I address how talking like that is against our rules, how we don't talk like that to people, etc.

Here are some other ways that I have embraced watching A Bug's Life.
1. We got out a few of their favorite bug books and identified which bugs are both in the movie and in the book. We also read bug books at bedtime.
2. The boys and I play "grasshopper chases the ants" up and down our hallway.
3. We visited the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum today. Aunt Ja-Joy has a membership so we just had to pay $9 for my mom. I found street parking so I didn't have to pay for parking either - I was pretty happy. It was our second time there and of course had a blast. We went straight for the Istock Family Look-In Animal Lab. We talked about which bugs were in our books and in the "bug movie." The boys were very excited to see the stick bugs and the tarantula. We caught the tail end of a worm workshop this volunteer was hosting (PERFECT for our bug week) and she was so great. She let them dig, with a small shovel, into this tub of compost to look for worms. Brant was so excited when he found one. Thankfully the woman was a pro with kids because Jaxon snatched it so quickly and almost ate it. The woman saved the worm and saved me from throwing up. Phew!
She held the worm and let the boys gently pet it. The volunteer asked good questions such as, "how did the worm feel when you touched it? Was it kinda slippery?" The woman also gave all three boys pictures of a worm for them to color.
We also ran into a volunteer that let the boys pick out binoculars and look out this huge window. They saw geese, a rabbit, birds - the boys were thrilled. They felt like true adventurers with those binoculars!
We went into the Butterfly Haven, which is Brant and Mason's favorite section. During the fall, Jaxon was terrified of the dried, dead leaves. He would run away screaming if the leaves blew in the wind toward him, especially if they scraped the concrete and made a bunch of noise. I wasn't sure how he was going to do in the butterfly room but he didn't seem to mind when the butterflies flew near him.
4. Tomorrow we are going to color our worm pictures and do a bug craft project of some sort.