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Insects Word Search

A word search dedicated to insects, perfect for curious young explorers. Hidden in the grid are eight words to find: butterfly, bee, ant, ladybug, dragonfly, spider, cricket and mosquito. Each creature offers a small science lesson about the tiny world around us. Print it for free or download it as a PDF: ideal for a garden-themed lesson, a science class, or a fun activity at home.

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Created for free at creapuzzle.com

Insects, one by one

Insects are the most numerous animals on Earth, and they live everywhere: in meadows, in gardens, even indoors. Small but vital to nature, they make a fine subject for a spring science lesson, and the notes below introduce the eight in the grid.

Butterfly — Tastes food with its feet and is born from a caterpillar through an amazing transformation called metamorphosis.

Bee — Communicates through a "dance" to tell others where to find flowers, and visits thousands of flowers to make one spoonful of honey.

Ant — Can lift objects up to fifty times its own body weight and lives in highly organised colonies.

Ladybug — Considered lucky in many cultures and a gardener's best friend, since it eats plant pests; its spots don't indicate its age.

Dragonfly — An extremely fast hunter that can fly in every direction, even backwards, with huge eyes that see almost all around it.

Spider — Not actually an insect but an arachnid; it spins webs from silk stronger than steel, weight for weight.

Cricket — "Sings" by rubbing its wings together, and its chirping announces summer evenings.

Mosquito — Detects our breath and body heat from a distance, which is how it finds us.

Six legs, three parts: how to spot an insect

To a naturalist, an insect is an animal whose body is divided into three parts (head, thorax and abdomen), with six legs attached to the thorax and two antennae on the head. This one rule is enough to sort the eight words in the grid: butterfly, bee, ant, ladybug, dragonfly, cricket and mosquito all follow it, while the spider has eight legs and two body parts, which makes it an arachnid. Counting the legs on a picture is a small observation exercise that works very well.

Insects also play a part that is not obvious at first: they pollinate flowers, enrich the soil, and feed birds and fish. More than a million species have been described worldwide, more than all other animals put together. Even on a balcony or in a meadow, ten minutes with a magnifying glass is enough to find at least ten different kinds. Some are remarkable builders and travellers too: a colony of ants can hold thousands of workers, a bee may visit hundreds of flowers in a day, and the dragonfly's ancestors flew over the Earth more than three hundred million years ago, long before the dinosaurs.

A bug hunt with a magnifying glass

After the word search, the natural next step is to look at real insects. Here are three suggestions:

  • The leg counter. Print outlines of a few insects and a spider and ask the children to count the legs: colour the six-legged ones green and the one that is not an insect orange.
  • A walk with a lens. In a meadow or garden, each child looks for at least three small creatures and draws them without touching; back home, the names can be checked against the grid or a book.
  • From egg to butterfly. Draw the life cycle in four stages (egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly), cut out the pictures and ask the children to put them back in order.

How this grid is built

Two words run horizontally, three vertically and three diagonally in this 13×13 grid. BUTTERFLY, with nine letters, is the longest word; BEE and ANT, with three each, are the shortest and the easiest to overlook among the other letters. No word is written backwards, and the larger grid leaves a little more room for the hunt.

More ways to play

To go further, open the generator and add grasshopper, beetle, wasp and caterpillar. A variant for parties: whoever finds a word has to tell a fact about that insect, and whoever tells the most without repeating themselves wins.

Also in Italian

In Italian: farfalla (butterfly), ape (bee), formica (ant), coccinella (ladybug), libellula (dragonfly), ragno (spider), grillo (cricket) and zanzara (mosquito). The Italian version of this word search is Crucipuzzle degli Insetti.

More word searches to try

If you liked the insects, there are more animals to look for:

More animal activities to do after the game are described in the article Animal word search puzzles.