While mosquitoes are small and often underestimated, they can have a huge impact on health and well-being. In many parts of the world, children and their families and communities still face daily challenges caused by mosquitoes that spread harmful diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. The role of mosquitoes and how to best avoid or prevent them is undoubtedly an important conversation to hold with children, as it teaches them important conservation ideas that could also reduce the number of mosquitoes peskily buzzing around their ears when they’re trying to eat an ice-cream cone! This article acts as a ‘roadmap’ in exploring different ways to hold a fun, positive, and productive conversation about mosquitoes with children. We’ve adapted this resource for different ages and types of children.
Why Talk About Mosquitoes?
Engaging children in conversations about mosquitoes serves several important purposes:
- Educating Children. Giving your kids information about mosquitoes will help them realize how keeping mosquitoes away from their bodies is healthy for them.
- Empowerment: Knowledge empowers children to take steps to protect themselves and their families.
- Developing Healthy Habits: In formative years, developing habits and practices conducive to long-term health and safety can be facilitated.
Strategies for Different Age Groups
1. Preschool and Early Primary (Ages 3-7)
Those children are too young and naturally inquisitive to absorb information only through dry explanations, so they need stories, play, and small amounts of information.
- Storytelling. Tell or read a story or picture book about characters struggling with mosquitoes. For instance, read ‘A Brave Little Mosquito’, or a story about a character who learns how to control the mosquitoes.
- Example Story: Mia and the Mosquito Adventure– If mosquitoes are our enemies, why do my arms itch I used this mosquito net last night.– Wait, they don’t like people? Oh okay, but they like animals, it’s true!– What can we do?– Wear long sleeves. Put this net on. I’ll take care of my fruit.
- Play-Based Learning: Make color-ins or sticker or stamp die-cut pages featuring mosquitoes, especially mosquito habitats and natural predators of mosquitoes (bats, dragonflies, carnivorous plants, frogs, fish).
- Basic Script: Mosquitoes are little insects that bite. When they do, they can make people sick. Simple Explanations: Mosquitoes are little bugs that bite you. Sometimes they make you sick. Use analogies that children can grasp, such as mosquitoes compared to ‘tiny little vampires’ that love to bite.
2. Middle Primary (Ages 8-11)
Because children in this age group can process more complex information, many are also interested in science and nature.
- Try Some Interactive Experiments: Simple experiments that demonstrate how mosquitoes lay eggs in stagnant water. Fill clear containers with water and let them see how a few drops of food coloring results in more interesting water to study.
- Educational Videos: Work through short, age-appropriate videos on mosquitoes and the infections they transmit. Numerous platforms have animated videos on these issues.
- FACTS AND FIGURES Find out interesting mosquito trivia such as how many different types of mosquitoes there are, what they like to eat, and which sensors they use to find people. Explain how different colors and smells can attract mosquitoes to a person.
3. Upper Primary and Early Secondary (Ages 12-15)
More advanced topics and problem-solving can become part of discussions with adolescents, and we can encourage them to engage in critical thinking about the evidence.
- Research Students can research the different types of mosquitoes and the diseases they are known to carry. Develop a presentation or report that represents what they’ve learned.
- Debate/Discussion: Organise debates on, eg, whether mosquitoes serve as important biological control agents or whether targeting and exclusion of the mosquito is the only appropriate way to deal with an overpopulation of mosquitoes. Again, this contextualizes the issue and opens it up to critical thinking.
- Community Action: Encourage students to engage in community-based projects, eg, to help design posters or campaigns to educate the rest of the community about mosquito prevention. This not only helps them develop key skills but also reinforces their learning.
Fun and Engaging Activities
1. Mosquito-Themed Games:
- Mosquito Hunt: An old scavenger hunt idea can be given a fresh twist in the fight against mosquitoes. Place colored stickers or paper cut-outs around the room or playground that depict ‘mosquitoes’ hidden under chairs, behind furniture, on bookcases, and so forth. When they find one, award them a pesky mosquito fact and/or a prevention recommendation.
- Mosquito Tag: Take a traditional game of tag and give it a mosquito twist. One child is ‘it’, the mosquito, while the others try to avoid being tagged with the mosquito using ‘repellent’ (bandanas or foam noodles).
2. Craft Activities:
- Construct a Mosquito Breeding Habitat Model (Using craft supplies, allow children to construct a model of a mosquito breeding habitat, such as standing water, where mosquitoes lay their eggs.
- Name That Bugs: Have children match pictures or photographs of insects with the names of the insects in a chart. Then they can compare what they have learned about insects to insects they find in their neighbourhoods and yards. Design Your Repellent: Let children concoct their recipes for ‘repellent’ from natural ingredients (such as essential oils), in a supervised environment. Let them speculate on what substances some people believe will repel mosquitoes.
3. Educational Materials:
- Infographics and Posters: Create colorful infographics and posters discussing the main points on mosquito prevention, including the use of bed nets, wearing clothing that covers the arms and legs, and draining standing water.
- Activity books: Develop or use existing activity books backfilled with jigsaws, crossword puzzles, or quizzes about mosquitos and malaria prevention.
Encouraging Preventive Practices
So after our children truly grasp the dangers of mosquitoes, the next step is to ask: What can we do with this?
- Daily Routines: Teach children to look for standing water around their home and pitch in to get rid of it. This could be part of a regular chore, task, or play.
- Pressures: Spray insect repellent on yourself or family members if you need to go outside and take mosquito precautions – e.g., wear long sleeves and trousers to block bites at dawn and dusk, the time of highest activity.
- Health Checks: Children should be encouraged to inform an adult if they have a mosquito bite so that, if required, action can take place.
Discussing mosquitoes with children can increase their motivation, involvement, and success in creating a safer and healthier world. Making subjects for conversation age-appropriate, interesting, and interactive, and discussing possible activities and behavior-based prevention can contribute to protecting children from the consequences of mosquito-borne diseases.
Mosquito control remains a labor-intensive and long-term effort, but teaching – and engaging – youth in mosquito prevention creates a foundation for health and healthier futures, it prevents catastrophic illness, and the bug-grippers of the future might start to see themselves as bug life heroes, on the ground improving health outcomes for themselves and their relatives.
