All About Insects!

I love teaching about insects. The kids usually find it so interesting. I start with caterpillars and then ladybugs, bees, and Ants. 

Ladybugs:

The Grouchy Ladybug - the kids wrote about what makes them grouchy. 

Directed Drawing Ladybug - we made our ladybugs, created a grass scene, and then wrote a fact about ladybugs in the speech bubbles. The kids loved this. 

Ladybug Addition 

I love when the kids illustrate and write their responses on our charts. 

Ladybug anchor chart 

The kids loved being able to touch these after learning about the ladybug life cycle. I got them from NASCO. 

Bees:

Marble painting bees 

Writing facts and making bees in our honeycomb 

Writing narratives about bees 

I used a new GLAD strategy I learned recently where you pencil out your anchor chart before your lesson and then you outline in marker as you talk about it. I tried it out and the kids seemed to be way more engaged. Then the next day we revisited our poster and added real pictures. My new favorite strategy. 

My kids were a little upset when they realized I didn't draw my bees thorax or legs! Ha so they referred to this poster as the "cutesy bee poster".

ANTS: 

We read the story Two Bad Ants and discussed where we would explore if we were as tiny as an ant! Their answers were so random and cute lol.

The kids were also really excited to see my real picture of ants that I found while on a morning walk. 

We used little ant cards to create our own addition and subtraction sentences. 

We read Hey, Little Ant and wrote about how we would've completed the ending. Should the boy step on the ant or no?

I always love our can/have/like charts

Another pictorial using GLAD strategies

And then I gave the kids flash cards of creepy crawlers and plastic bugs. They picked one and wrote a sentence about it. 

And I forgot to blog about earth day since I was at a weeklong training. But we made tear art earths and learned about ways to take care of the earth all week. My kids are recycling pros!