Going Buggy!

We did a quick unit on bugs a couple of weeks ago. Our science curriculum has changed, so, I didn’t do as much as I normally do.  Instead of studying the life cycle of a butterfly, we had Isopods!  Has anyone every had these in their classroom before?  What did you do with them?

I didn’t know that isopods really aren’t insects! They are more like lobster or shrimp and they breathe through gills.  Thank goodness my big brother is a 7th grade science teacher and could fill my in with some great info about our new class pets. I had great plans to do a comparison/contrast with insects and bugs, but the week got away from me. Next year, right?!

Here is what they look like at my science center:

Here’s an exoskeleton that one little guy found.  I haven’t had the guts to pick one of them up yet. ugh.

We have both pill bugs and sow bugs – the goal is for the kiddos to notice that there are 2 different kinds of bugs.  We observed how they move, how they eat, and their similarities and differences.  We did a drawing of a pill bug too in our science notebooks, but I must have forgotten a picture.  I’ll try to get one and upload it.

We also learned this fun song:

(Shout out to Brandy for letting me know about this song!)

Even though we weren’t doing insects, all of our centers were insect themed.  The kids LOVED it.

Here is what we were up to:

Count the room and a vowel sort.  I’m so proud of my kiddos – they are getting so good at CVC words!

 

We used a magnifying glass to look CLOSELY at the butterflies to find our sight words.

Some sentence reconstruction and handwriting practice.

Saying words slowly and writing all the sounds we hear:

  

Matching words with the same ending sounds.

Stamping coin values. (I added coin stickers to the back of these to help my kiddos that still struggle a bit with coins)

Practicing telling time to the half hour:

Adding two numbers by counting on:

 

Sequencing numbers:

 

This week we are learning all about weather! Pretty fitting since we have some CRAZY weather here – it was in the 70s today – average temps are in the 30s at this time!! I’m not complaining though!! I am almost finished with the weather unit and will post it as soon as I’m done.  I’m still working on hubby’s laptop though.  HP has decided that it is not the hard drive that is the problem, but the motherboard. (Isn’t that a funny word?) So FEDEX picked up our comp today – hopefully it won’t take them too long to fix it. I miss my computer!  It’s hard when hubby has to grade assignments for the online course he teaches, and do taxes, all while I want to create!! I think we’ll manage though – there are worse things that could happen!  This Going Buggy unit is posted now if you’re interested – just click on my TpT button to the left.