What's Bug Madness? Well, every March, the kids and I do a study unit on...you guessed it, BUGS! (aka insects) We have such a fun time learning about all the parts of a bug and what makes a bug, well, a bug! Last year was our first year doing a study on bugs, and we had such a great time with it, that we're doing it again this year.
I have been sneaking bugs into our regular lesson plan to make the kids think they're playing games when they're really learning. Nothing wrong with that right?
The first day of March, I hid some bugs (fake ones) around the house and had the kids take their bug catching kits to catch these six legged creatures. After catching them, the kids had to examine them using their magnify glasses. We then put them into groups like, which ones flew, we had to sort them by color and sizes, and then graphed our findings. We then had to read about what makes an insect an insect and see if what we caught qualified them as an insect. If what we caught was indeed an insect, it went back into our bug case. If it wasn't an insect, we let it go back into the house. (I had some plastic bats, rats and other nice things that you want in your house...NOT!)
Once all the bugs were accounted for, we read a bug count down book. 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1..no more bugs! Woo hoo! The kids had a blast counting the bugs and seeing how many different types there are!
I never really look forward to March, because I know what the theme of the month will be, but I am learning to like it more because the kids make it fun to learn about those little creatures that aren't mama's favorite. But there is a rule in our household. "If there is a bug outside, leave it alone. If there is a bug inside the house, well, that bug made the wrong choice!" I have been getting a little better though. Maybe because we don't get a lot of bugs in the house, but when one does sneak in, I try to be the better person and save it. (sorry but spiders have NO chance of survival in my house!)
So another fun way we get those little critters in our lesson plan is to make up games using bugs. Minnie (me's) math missions was to read the number and put that many stickers by the number. Super Boy had the same mission, but he just had to recognize the number- then do the same with the stickers. This not only helps them with reading and recognizing numbers, but it's great for their small motor skills- getting those bug stickers off the paper.
Both kids really enjoyed the activity. Minnie (me) is my perfectionist, so she would match the same type of bug, where Super Boy was more concerned about getting the correct number on the page. My little love bugs are so funny!
Another favorite activity we enjoy is labeling the parts of an insect. They can still tell you the parts of an ant from last year. "An ant has three main parts. The head, the trunk and the metasoma." They will also go more in detail..."The ant has feelers, pinchers, sharp claws, a stinger, a poison sac (which is located in the metasoma.") They are bug pros! A funny story about them is, the other day they were chasing each other around saying "I'm going to get you with my metasoma!" I just had to laugh out loud! As long as they use their learning for good not evil right? (hopefully they were telling an invisible "bad guy" they were going to get them and not saying it to their sister/brother!)
So, today we were learning the parts of a butterfly! They were really good at it and enjoyed a little workbook I put together for them. We had to take all we knew about insects and compare it to the parts of a butterfly. And you know what? A butterfly is a insect! We were playing little insect detectives!
Labeling our butterfly
So after our labeling was over, which is great for phonics and of course Science, we moved on to Math! The kids got really excited when I did a bug twist to a game that we love to play to help us learn our math problems.
So the kids had to fill in the colored areas with the right number of bugs. After both areas were filled, they had to slide those little bugs down into the last area and add it up! It was fun to use bugs with our Math lesson. They were really getting those addition problems done!
Getting the bugs ready to figure out the answer.
Slide the bugs down to the answer area......
The answer!!!
We played this game over and over! We were buggin' out! Sorry, I know that was bad!
Those Dollar Store bugs sure came in handy today! They will get even more usage since it's only the beginning of March! Now you can see why we call it "Bug Madness"!
I got the adorable "Add It Up" game from confessionsofahomeschooler .
No comments:
Post a Comment