Seven-year-old Violet Hoffman wasn’t planning on eating bugs this weekend.

But at the Churchville Nature Center on Saturday, she found a bug tasting booth that offered barbeque-flavored crickets and pizza-flavored worms.

At first Violet was hesitant. But her father, Matt, counted to three and they swallowed the dried worms together.

“How was it?” asked Matt.

“Good,” Violet said.

“What did it taste like?” he asked.

“Pizza,” she answered.

Violet wasn’t the only adventurous kid at this year’s “Arthropalooza” at the Bucks County nature center. Children ages 3 to 12 years surrounded the booth to taste the different flavored bugs.

This year’s event had more variety on the menu. Flavors included: barbeque, honey mustard, chocolate coffee, sour cream and onion, and curry.

The flavors are a way to incentivize people, said Susan Slawinski, the Churchville Nature Center public events coordinator. There was another incentive.

Gavin Drabik, 10, from Bensalem, tried a bug for the first time so he could wear the “I ate a bug” sticker.

“It tastes good,” he said. Gavin said he would do it again, if he got another sticker.

Brooke Harowitz, Churchville’s education program manager, said with the world’s population exploding, society needs to move towards more sustainable proteins and away from beef and chicken. Harowitz hopes to make eating bugs more normal and less scary. Many people on Saturday stepped up to the plate.

“Insects freak a lot of people out, but it’s nice to open the gateway and make things more accessible for people,” Harowitz said. “I think when people are up close and personal they are able to transform more than they thought that they would.”

Slawinski said Arthropalooza is a fun way for kids to learn and hopefully care about bugs. The annual event was launched in 2017 by Peg Mongillo, assistant director and education director at the center, as a way to bring in the public, educate them, and celebrate insects, spiders, and crustaceans.

She said they want to remove the “creepy” factor from bugs.

“Every arthropod has its place in the ecosystem. Just because you find it yucky doesn’t mean it’s not important, because it’s food for something else, they’re great decomposers, they play a role in the life cycle of all organisms,” Slawinski said. “Bugs are vital for everything we do. Without bugs, we wouldn’t have food.”

Other activities at Arthropalooza this year included racing hissing cockroaches, learning about monarch butterflies’ life cycles, and searching for water bugs in the frog pond.

Judith Foster, 86, was at the butterfly house with her adult grandchildren. She used to bring them to the center as kids. She said they asked her where she wanted to go this weekend and Foster chose the butterfly house over a movie or meal at a restaurant.

“It’s exhilarating,” Foster said. “It is just so wonderful to have in the community. You see all these little children in here, too, all ages. They’re as captivated as I am.”

About 20 butterflies were fluttering around, perching on wildflowers, and flying past children’s reaching fingers.

Two-year-old Lily Jones was sitting on a bench waiting for a butterfly to land on her hand.

Her mother, Meghan Jones, said Lily asks to visit the butterfly house every day. This is their third weekend in a row.

The first time the Jones visited the nature center, Lily fell into the frog pond. Lily tells the frog pond story every day, Meghan said.

Outside the butterfly house there were more educational booths and activities. The Bucks County Department of Health was teaching about mosquitoes and ticks.

Seven-year-old Michael Roames and 11-year-old Tenley Fistick were holding cockroaches. “They’re cute and they’re fun,” Tenley said. “And they tickle,” Michael said.

Christine, Michael’s mother, said Michael has loved cockroaches since he attended Arthropalooza last year. She said he waited all year to come back and hold his “friends” and play with them.

She said the center is a welcome respite.

“[Children] should be getting their hands dirty and they should be exploring,” Christine said. “It’s better than being on a screen.”