I is for Insect

There is something about boys and bugs.  Maybe all little kids, but I only have boys, and they are fascinated by bugs--even my older one who is kind of afraid of many of the little crawlies still is totally fascinated by them!  So, it was fun to do a little unit on insects.  Isaiah is a man of precision with his information, so he was thrilled to learn about corrections to common thoughts and was eager to correct anyone who talked about things like spiders as insects and such.

They really had fun building some bug snacks for a co-op day with our friends.  We just made some energy bites and added some pretzel stick pieces for legs (Isaiah was quick to point out the SIX legs for anyone who called them spiders) and some candy eyes we had on hand.

On the ladybug day, we made a ladybug out of a paper plate, some wiggle eyes, and some pipe cleaners.  Zeke lost interest in pretty quickly and didn't finish his.

We actually had a bit of a hard time getting the pieces to stick, as the glue just wouldn't dry.  It was just regular Elmer's school glue, but I think with the temperature being so cold in the house these days, it is affecting that.  But, Isaiah was determined to finish it, so we had to wait until a time that the electricity was on and run our little glue gun through a converter to finish it off, but here it is!

I made the boys a ladybug snack that day from things we had.  I cut an apple and then attached a few chocolate chips with dabs of peanut butter, again stuck on some pretzel legs and antennae, and I used a little chunk of chocolate to try to look like a head (which it doesn't really, but they were happy for the chocolate treat!).  

Isaiah did his honeycomb project from our curriculum, but we modified it to trace some of our pattern blocks to make hexagons on the paper.  The brown paper scraps are supposed to be bits of honey, and we used grains of rice to be eggs and beans to be larvae.

Here is one of the times the boys are just sitting to do some pages.  Ezekiel (well, both of the boys) love to use dot markers.  I've actually been really surprised at how often little Zeke wants to sit at the school table and do work like big brother.  He's a kid who tends to be in constant motion, and while he does love when I make him sensory or play bins or things, I have been surprised how often he chooses to do seat work kind of things that I get for him.  I think he really just likes the idea of being a "bid kid."

He definitely puts his own twist on those seat work/printable kind of tasts!  Here, I think he was making up a song to the pieces he put on the glue stick for his insect sorting sheet.

This is the insect sensory bin I put together.  I had intended to make the base all "grass" (shredded coconut I used food coloring to make green), but I didn't have enough coconut to fill the bin, so I put some "sand" cloud dough I had saved as the bottom and then put the "grass" on top of it.  Then, I just put in some plastic insects we had, a plastic log, and a strainer and spoon for scooping.

Who can resist this kind of reaction?!

One of the days when I had time just with Isaiah, we pulled out the sensory bin, and we made a bar graph of which colors of insects we had in the bin.

He asked me if he could write the numbers in the spaces instead of coloring them in.  His writing is one of his biggest growth areas, and he usually does not like to do much of it, so I let him go for it.   

When I told Isaiah we were going on an insect hunt, he asked me if he could make a map first to show where the insects are in our colony/neighborhood.  I love when he comes up with ideas like that for himself!

While we didn't actually find all that many varieties of insects, given that it is winter, both of my little bug hunters thoroughly got into the search!

Linking up this week with the Tot School Gathering Place over at 1+1+1=1.