Creepy Crawlies

Okay ya'll!  The weather in our part of Texas has been bee-u-ti-ful!! It is sooo pretty outside that I have spring fever....BIG time!  I think my kiddos do too! I'll admit....we took an extended recess today!  :)

These are the bluebonnets behind our school!!!!  Sooo pretty!

So....we talked about praying mantises today!  We watched an animal planet youtube on them and charted our info.

Updated pic of my spring mural outside my room.

Close up of the cute praying mantises we made....Deanna Jump!

We finally finished our word family ant hills.....It has taken us awhile because they have been working on them as time allows.

They created their own individual ant hill books to take home. This had a few from the display and a few they had to think up on their own.

They created their own bugs to graph with....They had to have everything an insect has to have.

Happy Spring!

I am going to go enjoy this beautiful weather!

*** Our April SMARTboard calendar file HOPEFULLY will be uploaded tomorrow afternoon!!!! We are still working on fun pages!  HOPEFULLY I will finish tonight!!!

Dragonflies and Fireflies!

For the past couple of days we have been studying dragonflies and fireflies.  We read several nonfiction books about both!  We also read The Very Lonely Firefly by Eric Carle, and Leo The Lightning Bug by Eric Drachman!  Both precious stories about fireflies!

We made these precious dragonflies from Deanna Jump's insect unit.

We made charts to show our learning.

We made these fireflies from Deanna Jump's unit, too!  Not a whole lot to show today but trying to keep this blog updated!  :)  We are making praying mantis' tomorrow!  Have a relaxing night friends!

All A-BUZZ About Bees!

We were busy bees today!  We started by reading this book by Melvin Berger.

Then we read this WONDERFUL book that I found at Barnes and Noble (my favorite place in the whole, wide, world!!!)  If you do not own this book and you will be talking about bees you HAVE to go get it....NOW!  It was soooo informative!  It talks about how the bees that stay in the hive have to beg for nectar from the forager bees.  They do this by tapping their antennae on that of the forager bees...that is how they beg.  So I had the kids turn to a partner and model this!  They had sooo much fun with this book....it was GREAT!

We made a chart with all of or new found info!

Then we made a bee....of course!

We compared bees with ants.

This is how our mural outside of our classroom is taking shape!  I just left my old pecan tree from our Texas unit and a few bluebonnets!

Have a great weekend! 

Next up.....dragonflies!

Bugs, Bugs, BUGS!!

We are little entomologists in our classroom this week.  We are working hard and having a blast studying insects!  The kids are loving it!  We are using Deanna Jump's Insect unit from TPT and other activities we have done throughout the years!  We are basically doing an insect a day.  Today.....ants!

We started by reading this book by Melvin Berger.

We made this chart with all of the information we learned!

The children created their ant!

We filled in the blank for their ant.

We read this precious book by Phillip and Hannah Hoose. It talks about a boy who likes to step on ants and tells a story through the ants perspective as well as the boys.  It leaves you hanging with a question.  Should the boy step on the ant?

The children wrote their answers!

It was very cute!

Tomorrow....I'll bring you our bee fun!

I have our word family ant hills all ready to go.  The kids will write words from each family to add to our ant hills.  I have a book that they will complete later in the week.