Saturday, May 19, 2012

Bugs!

The countdown continues - 4 more days! I know some people are off, out, relaxing. More power to you - I'll be joining you soon. 
I mentioned in a previous post that we do a reading series (Journeys) and we finished 2 weeks ago, so this past week, I had a little more freedom.
I purchased Deanna Jump's Insect unit and also Creepy Crawly Fun by Monica Schroeder. I used bits from both and then did some of my own. I used lots of Deanna's information with my kiddos. I did the Creepy Crawly Fun's Insect Diner from Monica - we wet sponges with honey water and set them outside to see what critters would come. None did :(  Good opportunity to talk about scientists trying more than one time and brainstorm ways to alter the experiment. We tried again the next morning, putting the sponges in the shade by some trees. It worked! Fun for the kids. We also watched Reading Rainbow's The Life Cycle of a Honeybee. They were so engrossed in this. The only talking were "Wows" and "Oh." Terrific!
 
After we watched the video and I read a book about bees, we drew a bee and then they added information they had learned about bees.

I used several books from Ann Heinrichs' Nature's Friends series. I got these from our Public Library (the school library wouldn't let me check out any books since it is almost the end of the school year.) Unfortunately, it appears they must be out of print - Amazon only sells it from other sellers.
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I had bought some air dry clay and I was going to have the kids make a Mother's Day something, but they were doing clay in art and time got away from me. So I still had the clay - and I decided to have them make their own insects. They had to include the 3 body parts and the insect had to have 6 legs. Turned pretty cool, especially for a Friday afternoon project. If I think about it, I'll take pictures.

I had 4 kids gone on Friday and one left at noon. I already know one kiddos is going to be gone at least on Monday and Tuesday. Just interesting.

OK - that's all for right now. We have a new high school (that my daughter will be going to next year) and they are doing tours today - so hub-bub and I are going to go have a look-see. Have a terrific weekend! Sara

2 comments:

  1. I love pulling up old videos that I watched as a child for my students. I usually think it'll be a crash and burn event and it turns into silence!

    Blessings,

    Jessica Stanford
    Mrs. Stanford's Class Blog
    My TpT Store

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    1. Sometimes Reading Rainbow videos work with my class and sometimes it seems a little over their head and they aren't interested. So I was glad they enjoyed it.

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