[ki6ds]

I am new to the forum, in fact, this is my first post. I am a high school biology teacher at Dos Palos High School, in Dos Palos, CA. As many of you have probably heard, we have taken some severe cuts to education in California and more are coming. I have no budget for supplies, yet I still want my students to do activities.

One of the things that I used to have the students do was an insect collection. That was cool, but it was messy, dangerous chemicals involved, glass kill jars, time consuming and hard to manage. Plus there were some definite skills that had to be mastered to get a good collection. Add to that the huge increase in pesticide use and it is getting hard to do this activity.

One day I found a couple of sites on the internet with insects, and out of curiosity, I built one. It was fun and easy. So, I went hunting and found 12 insect models. What I need are more. I found the 3 beautiful butterflies by Mak on here, and they are cool and in the set that I am using. I have also found the Canon site, and the Minolta one, the Sanwa site and the papercraft museum site.

Can anyone point me to more sites with insect models? I started the project right after State Testing and the kids are really into it. We printed out a set in black and white to let them practice, and now we are doing them in color. I love it as a teacher. No nets, chemicals, principals breathing down my neck because my students are catching insects right outside the room of the grouchy English teacher, you know the drill. Instead, I get out the scissors and glue, hand them a printed piece of cardstock and they are working!! We are even making our own display boxes from the example on the Sanwa site. But, I need more orders of insects. I have dragon flies, beetles (need a good lady bug), butterflies, but no bees, flies, etc. Can you help me? Thanks, Doug