Ants and Spiders

• Make crawling bugs such as ants or spiders with empty egg cartons. For ants, cut up the egg cartons so you have three of the egg sections in a row. Paint them black or red, then glue on pipe-cleaner legs and googly eyes. Make spiders in the same way, but this time use just one of the egg sections for the body and paint it black or brown. For dangling spiders, pierce a hole in the top of the egg section and thread an invisible cord, such as fishing line, through the hole.
  
  

Bumblebees and Flies

• You can make bumblebees out of eggs by piercing both ends of a raw egg, making the hole on the wider end a little larger than the one on the pointed end. Blow the contents of the egg out through the larger hole. Paint the empty eggshell in black and yellow stripes, paint a smiley face on one end and glue on tissue-paper wings. Then thread fishing line through the two holes in the egg to hang up the bee. You can use the same technique to make flies or flying beetles, by gluing on pipe-cleaner legs and painting the egg bodies in different colors.
  
  

Grasshoppers and Crickets

• Use clothespins to make cute grasshoppers and crickets. Paint the clothespins green for grasshoppers or brownish-yellow for crickets, then bend either craft wire or pipe cleaners in half for the strong jumping legs. Open the clothespin and glue the pipe-cleaner legs inside the hollowed-out section that would normally hold the clothes on the line. Glue wiggly eyes on the top edge of the clothespin, and either push in long, large-headed pins or use narrow pipe cleaners as antennae.
  
  

Butterflies and Caterpillars

• Glue together a row of small craft pom-poms to make a caterpillar. You could graduate the size of the pom-poms to make a tapering body, gluing wiggle eyes on the largest pom-pom, or make long thin caterpillars out of single-size pom-poms. Mix up the colors to make stripes, or give the caterpillar a different-colored head or tail. Make matching butterflies from pipe cleaners and tissue paper or colored construction paper. Use the pipe cleaner for the body and cut wings from the paper. Decorate the wings with paints or glitter, or use colored acetate sheets for translucent wings.