Saturday, September 24, 2011

Big Black Bugs

To finish up our letter B and bug theme this week, we made Big Black Bugs. The kids loved painting their bugs!


When the paint was dry, we added legs (strips of black trash bags) and google eyes. Amelia wanted a yellow mouth on her bug but we ran out of time.

While the paint dried, we went outside to see how many different bugs we could find. The grasshoppers were in abundance and not afraid to jump right on us. A little, white butterfly fluttered by, Amelia wanted to catch it. We caught a lady bug and everyone had a turn holding it before we set it free. There was a little black beetle by the back step which Will promptly squished. Bugs are fun!






We practiced writing our B's again and identified some pictures of "B" words. We sang the "Baby Bumble Bee" song and just went buggy.
Our sanck was "Bugs in the Mud" (chocolate pudding and raisins). Some of the kids preferred their mud without the bugs and some had the bugs on the side.
What a great week!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

B is for Butterfly

Today we read the book "Becoming Butterflies" by Anne Rockwell and talked about how a caterpillar changes into a butterfly.




The kids colored and cut out pictures of a caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly. We talked about what happened first, second, and third so the kids could glue their pictures in the right order. There were some very cool looking butterflies!
After practicing writing B's on the chalkboards, the kids matched butterfly halves by size and color. We took a break to fly around like butterflies and then played "Swat the Bug" where we swatted all but the butterflies.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Buggy for Letter B

This week our focus is on the letter B and our theme is Bugs & Insects. Today, we started with the song "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and then practiced making the B sound. Then the kids searched for big and little B's amongst several other letters and colored the B's blue. We practiced writing B's and then we painted B's with watercolors. The kids thought it was great that the B's have bumps.

We talked about some different kinds of bugs and looked at a really big moth that was caught outside our home this weekend. Then we focused on ants, a bug the kids know well. The kids pretended to be ants and carried away all of my picnic food. It takes a lot of coordination to carry play food on your back while crawling like an ant.

Another bug we all love is the lady bug. We talked about how lady bugs eat the bad bugs. The kids drew lady bug habitats for their lady bug stickers. I was impressed with how creative they were. There was pink grass, flowers of all colors, tall trees, and even a hammock. Those lady bugs are living in style!