Insects

We are underway on our insect unit and we have learned so many things already! Our new sight word this week is "said", so we watched the video to get us ready to find the word "said" in our sentences.

 We played "sight word swat" with our fly swatters!  Boy, did they love this game!

Dominick was a rock star reader, so he got to wear the google eyes to track his words.

We built sentences and used our bodies and sound effects to make the quotation mark symbol! Take a look below in this post, you will see us in action.

Here, we made "living sentences". We put our hands up to show a capital letter at the beginning of a sentences.

Since we are learning the word, "said", it's only natural to learn about quotation marks!

We read "Hey, Little Ant", and the students wrote "opinion" pieces on whether they would squish an ant or let him go! We had some very sympathetic friends!

Eric carle

As promised, we wrote a letter to Eric Carle on Wednesday. The students did NOT forget that we were going to write to the author of "The Grouchy Ladybug". Here are a few of the letters. Their reasoning is hysterical. Keep your fingers crossed that he writes back!

"...I think it's a girl because it makes good choices." And yes, she did that drawing COMPLETELY on her own.

How cute is this little guy's ladybug?

Hilarious... (and written by a boy).

Another FABULOUS example of phonetic spelling!!!!! "Is the Friendly ladybug a boy or a girl? I think it is a girl because friendlies are usually a girl."

The Grouchy Lady Bug

After reading the Grouchy Lady Bug, we wanted to delve into the study of insects even deeper. We watched the life cycle of a ladybug in this informative video clip. The students became entomologists (and were quite proud of using their impressive new vocabulary), and presented their findings to the class. I gave them no guidelines or restrictions, but simply told them to "take notes" on what they learned from the video. I was dazzled by their studious approach and their eager intentions. They were so enthralled by this process that they told me when they wanted me to "pause" the clip, so they could write down more accurate notes. Sometimes you just have to step back, and let them learn in their own way.

His focus was unbreakable!

Intently documenting his findings.

Look at this report!!!! (ALL ON HER OWN!)

I love how she organized her thoughts.

Entomologist Arabella reporting her findings.

We created our own "Grouchy Ladybug" book. We are learning to tell time to the hour and to the half hour. The students were able to re-create characters from the book and give their own reason why the animal could not fight.

She wrote about a Boa Constrictor being too "big and dangerous". I just LOVE her phonetic Kindergarten writing.

How cute is this whale?

Thank you to our fabulous aide, Mrs. McLean for  making the cover of our book.

 

After reading the Grouchy Ladybug MANY times, we did a "CLOSE" lesson on the story. As usual, I was amazed at the questions the students asked which prompted us to re-read and investigate the answer. The students got into a "friendly" debate about whether the Grouchy ladybug and Friendly ladybug were males or females. We looked back into the text to find out if the author provided evidence of the gender of the ladybugs. After further research, we discovered that Mr. Eric Carle did NOT provide a gender. Hmmmm I wonder why? The students were so intrigued, that they suggested that we write a letter to the author to ask why he did not use the words "he", or "she" to describe his characters. More on that later. Stay tuned!

Next, we wanted to use the text to provide evidence about why the Grouchy Ladybug was in fact "grouchy" and why the Friendly Ladybug was indeed "friendly". We re-read the text again. Every time the students heard evidence to support these characteristics, we wrote it on the board.

Finally, we wrapped up the activity by doing a "Project Act" activity called "Tug-O-War". First, I had to demonstrate to the students what a "tug-O-war" was. After all of the safety guidelines were ironed out, I had half of the class stand on one side to be the "Grouchy Ladybug", and the other half stand on the other side of the line to be the "Friendly Ladybug". The students got in their "tugging stance" and took turns "tugging" and shouting out something their character would say to "win over the aphids". Who do you think won?

Buggin' Out About Insects

What better way to finish our first week learning about insects than to create our favorite type of insect and to go look for them on campus!

I love how many different insects the kids chose as their favorites. I can't say cockroaches are my favorite, however.

Well, it looks like we're not the only ones on campus! We found lots of bugs in dirt, grass, on trees and even on the blacktop on our nature walk!

All in a Day's Work!

Don't you just love it when everything falls into place? Today was one of those days! Let me give you a glimpse into our day.

We got a new class pet. You simply can't replace the kind of learning that takes place with authentic, hands-on experiences. I was amazed at the inquiries that the students came up with. They learned things that I may not have thought to teach them, had they not asked such great questions. Here are a few of their scientific inquiries:

"What is that web stuff inside the cup?"
"What is the sandy stuff on the bottom?"
"Why is the caterpillar spiky?"
"Where will the butterflies live once they have wings?"

After we studied our new "pet", we wrote about the caterpillars in our journals.

Later, we had an awesome session of "Daily Five". At each station, the students practiced various reading skills. Here are a few shots from today's Daily Five.

We are working together to find matching initial sounds on our smart board.

Here, we are doing a short vowel word sort.

Lots of leveled reading taking place!

Utilizing our iPads to build words.

Remember our super cool insect song? Well, simply listening to the song is not going to cut it for us. After learning these incredibly challenging science terms, we choreographed our own "moves" to the song.

Creepy Crawly Cool Insects

What is creepy and crawly, you find them everywhere and your child is forever fascinated by them? That's right! It's insect time. Our students are learning all about insects. Last week, we learned about eggs and our students made the connection that insects are another type of animal that hatches from an egg! To kick off our insect unit, we sang this super cool song.