This unit lends itself to many, many strong hands activities where we get to use our little fingers. Using strawberry hullers, we placed teeny tiny little plastic ants into small ice cub trays. The sand table was filled with all kinds of plastic bugs that we scooped, crawled and helped dig tunnels for. Rubber stamps were flying as kids created beautiful bug scenes or just went crazy stamping bugs. We had pattern block butterflies to make, rubber caterpillars to pick up with butterfly hair clips,
and Cootie Bugs to make.
Bug Easter eggs were fun to match and put together and we had a blast with the wind up bug toys to make them move, wiggle, hop, or jump. Magnetic puzzle pieces were tricky to take out and put in with a magnet attached to a string. We fed our hungry caterpillars and played BUG SWAT where you have to use a small fly swatter to point to a bug picture. We work on "symmetry" during our bug unit, as butterflies and bugs are nature's perfect demonstrator of natural symmetry.
The bees were buzzing to their hive with a letter beehive lotto game. Our ladybugs needed some spots, so the younger kids rolled a color dice to determine what color spots our ladybugs needed, and the older kids used a dice and the "key" to find their colors. Ladybug squeezers helped to save the leaves from pom pom aphids. Ants in the Pants creates lots of giggles and laughter seeing those colored ants fly around! More symmetry is explored with butterfly games, coloring, and "design your own" butterflies using felt pieces. We searched for small bee erasers in a tub filled with Honeycomb cereal. A different tub of bug parts helped us create even more bug creatures! A magical activity was the spider web rubbing. The kids were amazed by the "hidden" spider webs on our table (glue that had dried that I made in the shape of a spider web). With a piece of paper and the side of a crayon, VOILA! a spider web is created! They then made fingerprint spiders on their webs to add to the effect. Scoop a Bug is fun as you have to use scooper tongs to pick up the bugs and sort them where they belong. I also had a smaller Eric Carle, Very Hungry Caterpillar puzzle they enjoyed.
The kids had a blast being bakers while decorating their own cupcakes with pastry bags filled with icing. We then put all of their wonderful creations together to form a long cupcake caterpillar. Of course the best part, eating the caterpillars! Kids got to experience the world of a bug by putting on a bug headband, complete with antennae, and then crawling around under our grassy table. The timer was busy buzzing away as everyone wanted some turns! More symmetry with butterfly alphabet matching, creating bugs with the Rainbow Blocks and our magnificent butterfly paintings! Stringing spiders on their webs was great counting practice. Playdough and diffuser paper made some wonderful bug creations as well. We pretended to be bees gathering pollen and placing it in the honeycombs with little yellow beads and tweezers. There is that static electricity again! This time we made butterflies fly!
The Bug Unit lends itself to an author study on Eric Carle. He is one of my favorite authors and his books always have a special surprise. We read the
Very Hungry Caterpillar and the next day we fed a tin can caterpillar his food the next day as we worked on story sequencing and the life cycle of a butterfly.
The Very Busy Spider lent itself to our glue spider webs on the table and making a hula hoop weaving web.
The Very Quiet Cricket with it's magical chirping at the end,
The Very Lonely Firefly with the blinking fireflies at the end, and
The Very Clumsy Click Beetle with his clicking at the end, are the top kid favorites.
The Grouchy Ladybug works on size concepts and a discussion on feelings, as well as that is how they learned about the bad aphids eating the leaves. Mrs. D transformed herself into a bug with special goggles. We played "Bug in the Rug" with the parachute. This is a detective game where one student (the bug detector) looks around the circle to see who is missing (the bug) and hiding under the rug (parachute). We played this game over and over! The older kids just love the beehive game where we try to figure out how many bees are hiding by process of elimination with the numerals. If there are 3 bees hiding and someone guesses 7, we can erase the 7 and then all of the numbers above 7 (8, 9, 10). If they guess 2, we can erase 2 and also 1. Eventually the kids narrow the numbers down so they can guess the correct number of bees hiding.
