ACTIVITY 14

Insects in History

Teaching Objectives:

1. Students will research the place of insects in the earth's history.
2. Students will create a timeline showing the appearance of the insects on earth and compare them to the appearance of other animals and man.
3. Students will learn what a timeline represents.

Materials Needed:

• White freezer wrap paper or white paper from a roll of bulletin board paper
• Markers or tempera paint
• Yardstick
• Various commercially prepared timelines

Procedure:

Ask the students to name their favorite animals, either living or extinct. Make a list of those the students would like to research and assign specific students to determine how long each class of animal has been on earth. Include insects on the list.

As the students find the information, write down on the list the dates of the appearance of these animal classes in geological time, rounded off to the nearest thousand years.

Have the students determine where the time-line should be hung and measure that space. Determine what the date is of the earliest animal class on the list to appear and what the date is of the latest on the list. Use these numbers to determine how many thousand-year increments will be on the time-line. Using the length of the space available and the number of thousand-year divisions, have the students determine what the scale of the time-line should be.

Have the students design their timeline, mark the divisions on the white paper, using pencil first and then going over the lines with markers or tempera paint. They may want to incorporate magazine pictures or photographs of these animals, or they may want to draw pictures of the animals.

Hang the finished timeline on the classroom wall.

Supplemental Activities:

Write a report about the importance of the scarab beetle in ancient Egypt. Cultural Entomology Digest. Go to Issue 2 and then click on the "Beetles as Religious Symbols." Index of /IHS also has information about how insects have shaped human history.

Find information about the importance of insects to other civilizations, both ancient and modern.