bugs & insects.

I've kept you waiting so I won't put it off any longer.  Here are some more great bug and insect ideas for you!

We colored this page from Mr. Eric Carle himself then cut it out and glued the pieces in order on a sentence strip...for a crown of course!

Then we made super stretcher sentence caterpillars with one word on each segment.  Yay for wanting to use a lot of adjectives and stretch it out!

{plus a hint of our pasta butterfly life cycle on green leaves.}

Then we made beautiful tissue paper butterflies on wax paper for the windows.  Color scheme was up to each kid.

Some were patterned or planned and others were willy nilly but they all help make our view more beautiful!

Of course this was the day I left my external hard-drive at home with Deanna's bug unit so I had to quickly make up our own stationery pages with her awesome idea.

 I only had 2 colors of ink pads but think our fingerprint bugs still made cute decorations!  :)

Thursday morning was pretty rough {explained in my last post} so I was extremely thankful for The Magic School Bus Gets Ants in Its Pants to get the stay started more easily.  We used Kelly's cute pattern to record our ant facts.

Then we read Hey Little Ant and used Kelly's persuasive writing journal page.  Would you step on the ant?  Some said yes...

...and some said no!

We made insect pattern crowns by choosing bug picture squares {found in my bug box from who knows what!} and then continuing the pattern with pictures.  Loved them.

Lastly we read The Grouchy Ladybug and wrote about how we would cheer him up.

Be sure to check last week's post for ideas on bees, diagrams, entomologist tools and a few freebies.

Guess it's time for me to go finish off the leftover dirt pudding...worms included.  ;)

creepy crawlers.

I. Love. May.  We call it {May Days} at my school and I start thinking about it around, oh, March.  Minus fall, pumpkins and apples, this is my favorite time of the year.

In case you can't tell by my advanced artistic abilities, this week is all about bugs and insects!  We started our theme by flipping through the books in our library and reading a sight word book to learn the basics.

We learned this super cute song from Teach it With Class to help us remember the parts of an insect...

then made our own diagrams.

For math we used toys bugs on our picnic mats to practice story problems

 and played a counting game where we tried to get 50 spots on the ladybug.

{We used 1 ladybug per pair and beans as spots.  You could use chocolate chips or M&Ms too.  If your  manipulatives are bigger, each child could have their own ladybug board.}

 Today we focused on bees and did a great pollination experiment from Little Kinder Warriors using cheetos as pollen!

We also made bees with wax paper wings.

We began talking about entomologists and the tools that they use so we had to practice looking at all kinds of insects up close with magnifying glasses.

As we study I'm adding to our Bug & Insect journal pages.  Check back this weekend to see what else I've come up with.

Happy May Days!!!  :)

Insects, Balloons, Superheroes & the Circus!

Just as we began our May Days themes, a lot of external things came to pass...SmartBoards being installed, new {& LENGTHY} district assessments, tech issues with DIBELS that resulted in retesting all the kids...twice.  We also had a really tough day as we learned that we were losing 7 teachers next year.  While it was a little disappointing to not get to all of our super fun activities, I also had much practice this week in patience, flexibility and remembering what really matters.  These were all intended to be individual posts full to the brim with ideas, but just as things in the classroom can change at any moment, I'm learning the same goes for Blogland.  I hope you'll still find something new and ready-to-use!

Bugs & Insects

We used Eric Carle's coloring sheet to sequence the events in The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Since I can't ever leave anything as just a worksheet it became our favorite product...a sentence strip crown!

{egg carton insects with all 3 body parts & antennae}

{tissue paper butterflies to beautify the view & replace our friends who flew away}

We used this super cute Read the Room blends activity from Teach it With Class and I was thrilled & surprised to see how many of the words my kinders could actually sound out and read on their own!

Shannon at Kinder-pond also provided us with a directionality book & nonsense word sort.

 Bubbles & Balloons

{using Crickweb's fabulous counting activities on our new SmartBoard!}

{counting how many times we can hit the balloon without it touching the ground}

{moving bubbles to correctly spell mixed-up sight words}

Circus Day

{watching actual Ringling Brothers footage before writing about acts}

{our adorable animal cracker circus train}

Superhero Day

{we created superhero names by writing a list of nouns and a list of adjectives and putting them in a basket.  everyone chose one word from each group and voila!, new supercharacter to write about.}

Lindsey at The Teacher Wife also has an awesome unit on -er & -est endings using superheroes that we used in our guided reading groups.  Definitely worth a couple of dollars!

 And a little something extra...

 

While our SmartBoard was installed we spent the morning across the hall buddied up with our favorite first graders in Mrs. Wick's class!  They had been studying homes for people and animals and we just couldn't pass up this cute activity.  After reading House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle, we made our shells fancy with decoration, too.  Thanks for sharing Mrs. Wicks!!

{cute crab & shell printables from A Mommy's Adventures}

I also found this activity on Homeschool Share that would be great to incorporate into a math or calendar lesson!