Science and Technology K–6 · Kindergarten

Minibeast close-up: drawing and grouping features through a bug viewer

Living World (NSW 2017); Science understanding, Biological sciences (ACARA v9)

PracticalMedium risk

School laboratory, not for home

In a school laboratory, with a teacher supervising, under the school's risk assessment. Not for home.

The idea

A magnifier shows features that are too small to see by eye, and counting those features, legs, body parts, antennae and wings, sorts every small animal in the schoolyard into groups.

Safety card

Medium riskA teacher supervises

Setting: In a school laboratory, with a teacher supervising, under the school's risk assessment. Not for home.

Hazards

Venomous spiders shelter in litter and bark in NSW: a funnel-web bite is a medical emergency, and a redback bite needs medical attention
Ant and bee stings, and allergic reactions to them
Sharp objects and soil mixed through collected litter
Animal welfare: a small animal is easily crushed, or left too long in a warm pot

Controls

The adult collects the litter, spreads it on the tray and looks over it before any child leans in
No child puts a hand into litter, a hole or a crevice: animals are moved only by the adult, with the brush
No spider is brushed into a viewer or touched; a spider is looked at where it sits and matched from the photo cards
A suspected funnel-web bite is treated as a medical emergency under the school's first aid plan: 000 is called and a pressure bandage and immobilisation are applied as for a snake bite, the first aid the Australian Museum states for funnel-web bites. A suspected redback bite gets an ice pack and medical attention and no pressure bandage, which the Australian Museum says worsens the pain
Closed shoes and socks for every child, gloves for the adult handling litter, and hands washed well afterwards
Each child's allergy action plan checked before the lesson, and any prescribed adrenaline autoinjector taken outside with the class
Viewers kept in the shade, opened within the lesson, and every animal and all the litter returned to the same garden bed

Note

Live animals: the 2017 syllabus Animal Welfare section and the NSW Department of Education science safety and compliance page (which points to the Animals in Schools site) apply; return every animal to where it was found. Record the activity on Primary School RiskAssess (riskassess.com.au).

What you need

1 bug viewer per pair: a clear pot with a magnifying lid of 2 or 3 times magnification, plus a soft paintbrush for the adult
A white tray or a sheet of white paper per pair, and a trowel and a bucket for the adult
A bucket of leaf litter, bark and mulch the adult has collected from a garden bed before the lesson
8 photo cards of common finds: ant, beetle, slater, millipede, earthworm, garden snail, spider, caterpillar
1 drawing sheet per child with a large empty circle for the close-up and four boxes headed legs, body parts, antennae, wings
4 sorting hoops or A3 sheets labelled with a picture and the words 6 legs, 8 legs, many legs, no legs
Closed shoes and socks for everyone, gloves for the adult, and soap and water for afterwards

How to do it

Before the lesson the adult collects a bucket of leaf litter and bark from a garden bed and notes where it came from.
The adult tips a handful onto each pair's white tray, spreads it thin with the trowel and looks over it before the children lean in.
Each pair watches their tray until something moves, then the adult brushes one animal into the viewer and closes the lid.
Look through the magnifying lid and count the legs. Write the count in the legs box. Count the body parts, then look for antennae and for wings and fill those boxes.
Draw what the viewer shows inside the big circle, large enough that a classmate can count the legs from the drawing.
Carry the viewer to the hoop that matches the leg count, put it down beside the hoop and say which feature put it there.
Look at the same animal with the lid off and no magnifier, and say which of the four features could not be counted that way.
The adult brushes every animal back onto the tray and returns all the litter and all the animals to the same garden bed at the end of the lesson.

What you should see

Through the lens the children can count what they could not see before: an ant's six legs, three body parts and two bent antennae; a spider's eight legs, two body parts and no antennae; the many pairs of legs down a millipede; none at all on a worm or a snail. Nearly every find goes into one of the four hoops, and when a drawing is large enough to count from, two children looking at the same animal record the same leg count, which is the test of a useful scientific drawing. Schoolyard litter reliably yields ants and slaters, so a hoop that keeps filling with the same animal is itself a finding about where that animal lives, and the class can say which hoop was busiest. The learner knows it worked when a child can name the hoop an animal belongs in and the feature that put it there, and can say that the lid-off look did not show enough to count.

What changes

This activity lists no variables to change, measure and keep the same.

Common misconceptions

Each of these ideas is wrong, and the activity is a chance to test it.

A spider is an insect.
Every small animal is an insect or a bug.
A magnifier makes the animal bigger rather than showing more of its detail.
Animals found outside can be kept in the classroom pot for days.
An animal with no legs is not an animal.

Curriculum references

The NSW syllabus outcomes and Australian Curriculum v9 codes this activity supports. They are references, not a verified or complete curriculum alignment.

Science and Technology K-6 Syllabus (2017), NESA. Current syllabus; NESA's timeline is 2026 plan and prepare, 2027 start teaching the 2024 syllabus. Code read from the official syllabus document on 2026-09-22.STe-3LW-ST STe-1WS-S
Science and Technology K-6 Syllabus (2024), NESA. Implementation from 2027, so this code describes the future syllabus. Code read from the outcomes page on 2026-09-22.STE-SCI-01 STE-PQU-01
Australian Curriculum v9AC9SFU01AC9SFI02AC9SFI03AC9SFI05

Sources

The pages the author read to write this activity.

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