Backyard Bugs! Fun Bug Facts

Meet a cricket that hears with its legs! Grab a magnifying glass for a pick-your-path backyard bug hunt full of fun bug facts. For kids 3–7+, free to preview.

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Illustration from Backyard Bugs! Fun Bug Facts

Let's go exploring, right here in the backyard, where some amazing bugs live! Grab the magnifying glass, part the grass and... CHIRP! It's a CRICKET! A cricket's ears are on its front legs, just below its knees. Could YOU hear with your knees?

Look up this grass stalk. A red dot is climbing! It's a LADYBUG! A ladybug's real wings hide folded under her spotty shell, and they're four times bigger than she is! Watch. Up goes the shell, out pop the wings, and away she flies!

Now tip up the flowerpot. Whoa, little gray balls! They're ROLY-POLIES, curled up tight. And here's the surprise. Roly-polies are cousins of crabs and shrimp, not insects at all! Tiny crab cousins, right in your yard. No wonder they love it damp under there.

Shall we peek at who's hiding under the soggy log, or who's nibbling up in the leafy bush?

Fun bug facts for kids

Backyard Bugs! is an interactive story that takes kids aged 3 to 8 bug hunting right outside their own door. We grab a magnifying glass and find insects, spiders, snails and worms under logs, in the dirt, on the pond and up in the flowers, with every page written to be read aloud together. Here are some of our favorite fun bug facts.

A snail has no legs, just one big slippery foot, and its sticky slime lets it climb walls and hang upside down.
An earwig mom guards her eggs for weeks and cleans them one by one.
A click beetle stuck on its back snaps its body with a loud click and pops into the air.
A caterpillar's stubby back legs are covered in tiny hooks that grip like velcro.
Ants look after aphids like farmers with cows, tapping them for a sweet drop to drink.
Earthworms eat dirt all day, and their poop helps gardens grow.
Some baby cicadas wait underground for seventeen years before they dig up into the sunshine.
A water strider's feet are covered in tiny hairs that keep it dry, so it can stand on water without sinking.
A baby caddisfly glues stones and sticks together with its own silk to build a house it carries around.
Butterflies taste with their feet.
Honeybees have hairy eyes, and the hairs catch pollen dust so it can't block their view.
Fireflies are really beetles, and each kind blinks its own light pattern.

What's inside the story

The journey starts in the backyard grass, then heads either under a soggy log or up into a leafy bush. From there it opens into four paths, each exploring one part of the yard: down into the dirt, out to the pond, into the flower bed, or along the fence to a spider web.

The story has 28 pages, four paths and four different endings, and every ending leaves kids with something to look for outside their own door. Every fact is checked, and the whole story is narrated for read-aloud time together.

Cool and weird bug facts

What are some cool bug facts for kids?

Lots of garden spiders roll up their old web each evening and eat it, then spin a brand-new one. A male mole cricket even sings from a burrow shaped like a trumpet, which makes his song louder.

What are some weird bug facts?

A hoverfly is a fly dressed up as a bee, so birds leave it alone, but it can't sting at all. And a snail's tongue is covered in thousands of tiny teeth.