March 2nd, 2010

Today was a very busy day as we started our first official week of learning about insects.

First, we made a list of all of our questions we had about insects. We want to research whether bugs have brains, how long bugs sleep, and how insects have babies. We also wanted to know the differences between butterflies and moths.


In the Atelier we studied pictures of ladybugs and painted our own ladybugs using fingerpaints.



We also played with fake insects in the moon sand. We made insect tracks and burrowed our insects in the moon sand.


We learned how to trace pictures of bugs on the projector. We used teamwork and our fine motor skills to carefully follow the outline of bugs projected on huge pieces of paper. We talked about what we noticed about the bugs.



After tracing the bugs, we painted them in. We will be labeling the bugs later and doing a special project with our creation station!



We also used play dough and pipe cleaners to invent our own insects. Working with play dough develops the small muscles in our hands, which in turn helps us to build the strength we need for writing!



During afternoon centers, we looked at pictures of insects. We discussed what we observed about insects with buddies. We noticed that all insects have six legs. We wrote "Insects have 6 legs" on a sheet of paper and cut out pictures of insects displaying their legs.






We also used new 3D insect puzzles with very small pieces. Because the insect pieces are easy to use, we voted and decided that only 3 people could play with the 3D insect puzzles at a time.

Some of us spent almost the whole center time working on piecing the bugs together. We asked our friends for help finding the small pieces. This center took so much of patience and persistence!

Luckily, we also have 3D bug models to sort and observe!

James sorted the bugs into beetles and non-beetles!

We also had new compound eye lenses to use. We noticed that bugs see very differently than we do. They can see multiple images at one time, and movement is magnified through the insect lenses.