Ants and TermitesThis file includes Ants and Termites, Bees and Wasps, Bugs and Beetles, Butterflies and Moths, Centipedes and Worms, Scorpions, Cockroaches, Crickets and Grasshoppers, Dragonflies, Fireflies, Flies and Fleas, Ladybugs, Mosquitoes and Gnats, Spiders, and Birds. Also see Misc Animals.
(Aileen Fisher)
Don't you think it's probable
that beetles, bugs and bees
talk about a lot of things--
you know, such things as these:
The kind of weather where they live
in jungles tall with grass
and earthquakes in their villages
whenever people pass!
Of course, we'll never know if bugs
talk very much at all,
because our ears are far too big
for talk that is so small.
Ants and Termites(Ogden Nash)
Some primal termite knocked on wood;
and tasted it, and found it good.
That is why your Cousin May
fell through the parlor floor today.
Bees and Wasps 
Old beekeepers never die, they just buzz off.
(Margaret Wise Brown)
Black and yellow
Little fur bee
Buzzing away
In the timothy.
Drowsy
Browsy
Lump of a bee
Rumbly
Tumbly
Bumbly bee.
Where are you taking
Your golden plunder
Humming along
Like baby thunder?
Over the clover
And over the hay
Then over the apple trees
Zoom away.
Oh, say, busy bee,
Where now are you going?
Where now are you going,
To work or to play?
I'm bound for the garden
Where roses are blooming
For I must be making
Sweet honey today.
Buzz, Buzz, busy bee is your honey sweet?
Yes sir, yes sir, sweet enough to eat.
Honey on your muffin and honey on your cake.
Honey by the spoonful as much as I can make.
Give each customer a zigzag ruler; a 12" strip of green paper with the zigzag cut out on one side; five yellow and four purple polka dot triangles to alternate in the open areas on the green strip; and one mod of bumblebee stickers. I did an example on a black refill page using outdoor pics of my daughter and titled it "We were busy as bees in preschool!". I also did a 2-page spread with the triangles inside the green along the outside edges that is titled "Meet my honeys!". (Momof6)
Butterflies, Caterpillars and Moths 
Butterflies don't fly
They just hitchhike the winds.
Butterflies are a lie
The deceit is a worm with wings.
Butterflies don't fly
They set sail and glide.
Butterflies are not beautiful
The colors are just a feast to the eye.
(Robert Graves)
The butterfly, the cabbage white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has--who knows so well as I?--
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the aerobatic swift
Has not his flying-crooked gift.
If anyone desires a wish to come true
they must capture a butterfly
and whisper that wish to it.
Since they make no sound,
they can't tell the wish
to anyone but the Great Spirit.
So by making the wish
and releasing the butterfly
it will be taken to the heavens and be granted.
A butterfly lights beside us, like a sunbeam . . .
and for a brief moment it's glory
and beauty belong to our world . . .
but then it flies on again and, although
we wish it could have stayed,
we are so thankful to have seen it at all.
Flutter by,
Butterfly,
Floating flower
in the sky.
Kiss me with your
Petal wings--
Whisper secrets,
Tell of spring.
(Robert Frost)
It is blue-butterfly day here in spring,
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.
But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.
(Aileen Fisher)
What do Caterpillars do?
Nothing much but chew and chew.
What do caterpillars know?
Nothing much but how to grow.
They just eat what by and by
Will help them be a butterfly,
But that is more than I can do
However much I chew and chew.
(Monica Shannon)
Is a caterpillar ticklish?
Well, it's always my belief
That he giggles, as he wiggles
Across a hairy leaf.
(Emily Dickinson)
A Moth the hue of this
Haunts Candles in Brazil.
Nature's Experience would make
Our Reddest Second pale.
Nature is fond, I sometimes think,
Of Trinkets, as a Girl.
(Kobayashi Issa)
This moth saw brightness
in a woman's chamber--
burnt to a crisp.
Centipedes and WormsA centipede was happy quite,
Until a frog in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
This raised her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in the ditch
Considering how to run.
Inch Worm
(Frank Loesser)
Inch worm, inch worm
Measuring the marigolds.
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How beautiful they are.
The littlest worm you ever saw
Got stuck inside my soda straw
He said to me, "Don't take a sip,
'Cause if you do, you'll get real sick."
I took a sip and he went down
Right through my pipe, he must have drowned
He was my pal, he was my friend
There is no more, this is the end.
Now don't you fret, now don't you fear,
That little worm had scuba gear.
ScorpionsThe Scorpion is as black as soot,
He dearly loves to bite;
He is a most unpleasant brute
To find in bed at night.
Crickets and Grasshoppers
(Rea Williams)
Crickets reciting
mantras to a fresh new dawn
--awakeness unfolds.
(John Keats)
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's--he takes the lead
In summer luxury,--he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
(Vachel Lindsay)
The Grasshopper, the Grasshopper,
I will explain to you--
He is the Brownies' racehorse,
The Fairies' Kangaroo.
(Eleanor Farjeon)
When the heat of the summer
Made drowsy the land,
A dragon-fly came
And sat on my hand,
With its blue jointed body,
And wings like spun glass,
It lit on my fingers
As though they were grass.
(Frances Gorman Risser)
When darkness falls in summertime,
The avenues of air
Are full of glowworm motor cops.
They're zipping everywhere.
With flashlights snapping on and off,
They signal: Left! or Right!
Directing Bugland traffic jams
On highways of the night!
(Aileen Fisher)
Firefly, firefly in the night,
when you flash your twinkly light,
do you know as you flit by
you're a beetle, not a fly?
Firefly, firefly in the dark,
do you know you have no spark,
not a spark of fire at all . . .
just a light that's cool and small?
Firefly, firefly, please come by
underneath the darkened sky,
blinking as you flit along . . .
even if you're name is wrong.
(Aileen Fisher)
In the soft dark night
when the wind is still
and bullfrogs croak
at the bottom of the hill,
the fireflies reach
inside their coat pockets
and screw little light bulbs
into their sockets
so they can fly
through the night and play
without bumping their heads
or losing their way.
Flies and Fleas 
Curious fly,
Vinegar jug,
Slippery edge,
Pickled bug.
(Ogden Nash)
The Lord in His wisdom made the fly,
And then forgot to tell us why.
(Augustus de Morgan)
Great fleas have little fleas
upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so ad infinitum.
(Strickland Gillilan)
Adam
Had'em
Ladybugs 
Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home
(Aileen Fisher)
Down in the hollow,
Not so far away
I saw some little Ladybugs
When I went to play.
Swinging in the Clover,
Up in the air
I wonder if the Ladybugs
Knew I was there.
(Maria Fleming)
Ladybugs all dressed in red
Strolling through the flower bed.
If I were tiny just like you
I'd creep among the flowers too!
Mosquitoes and GnatsGnats are gnumerous
But small.
We hardly gnotice them
At all.
Spiders The itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out.
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain.
And the itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the spout again.
Birds have been moved to a separate file.
Some graphics on this site are from Public Domain Clip Art, Free Clip Art Library and Free Clipart Now.
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