Drinkable Blood Recipe

It’s almost Halloween and time to up the creepy factor around here!  We’re jumping right into the fun with blood sucking insects and other bloody goodness.  It’s not only Dracula we have to watch out for this time of year, there are also a slew of blood sucking pests! Just thinking about insects that live off us humans totally grosses me out! Let’s see, we have mosquitos, ticks, lice, tapeworms, bed bugs and fleas. Eek! Gives me the shivers! The Orkin Ecologist has a slew of interesting information on the topic because they’ve been studying them for 100 years. They have interesting articles with pretty much anything you want to know about insects and my personal favorite cool project ideas for kids! This is a sponsored post.

So, let’s jump right in. Today we’re gonna get icky!  I created a fun worksheet called “Blood Sucking Pest Fun” to get the icky party started!  Then after we learn a little about pests that live off human blood, we’ll see if your up for a challenge! Can you drink blood? Okay well not real blood, but I have a recipe to share that is “like” blood in color and consistency.  You can totally gross your kids out. I did, it was all in good fun!

Print the Blood Sucking Pest Fun Worksheet.  It’s time for a little pest investigation. You can use a slew of sources to get information about these creepy crawlers, but we started over at The Orkin Ecologist website. There is basic information about each of the pests included on the sheet. One of the most icky things we learned was that Tapeworms live inside humans and you can get them by eating infected undercooked meat. YUCK! Some of these pests can be simply irritating, but others can actually be the cause of more serious issues like ticks and mosquitos.

 Learning and creating awareness makes this worksheet education and fun since it fits the Halloween theme. Both of my parents actually have Lyme disease from ticks, so we are always extra cautious and like to keep the dialogue open in our family about how to prevent and protect against these pests.  Hope you will benefit and enjoy doing some investigating with your kiddos too!

Now that you’ve done some research on The Orkin Ecologist website, it's time to see if you are up for a little GROSS challenge? We’ll see!  My son was very intrigued by the drinkable blood challenge. Do you think he tried some?

Drinkable Blood Recipe

⅓ Cup Water

2 Teaspoons Light Corn Syrup

1 Teaspoon Chocolate Syrup

8 Drops of Red Food Coloring

Double the batch to fit one plastic baggie if desired.

We used sandwich sized baggies and I made up some gruesome tags to make it even more icky. I printed mine on  8.5″ x 11″ Avery Sticker Project Paper, but you could also print on regular paper and tape on instead.

Download PRINTABLE BLOOD BAG TAGS – 6 Per Page

I personally couldn’t wait to see if my son would be brave enough to taste this bloody concoction! It took him a while to suck it up and take a try! Can you tell what he thought of it?

We had a fun time with this little pest project and I certainly had a good time teasing my son! Hope you will enjoy learning about blood sucking pests too!

Do you think your kids would take a sip of  “blood?

Want more fun insect and pest project ideas? Make sure to visit The Orkin Ecologist or their Pinterest page for ideas like this one:

Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments! Tell me what you would like to do? Do you have have any other spooky activities planned?