Eric Carle

Who doesn't love Eric Carle??  He is the perfect author to study while learning about insects.  You can pick out a book illustrated by him very easily.  We loved learning more about his life and how he first came to create books.  You have to visit his website and watch some of his videos.  We listened to him tell the story of how The Very Hungry Caterpillar came to be.  It was pretty neat to see how his ideas evolve and how a hole punch led to one of the most widely known characters in the world.  I loved how the kids then made the connection to the inside cover art (paper that looked as if holes had been punched) and the title page/first page with the colored holes/circles.  We watched how Mr. Carle creates his papers and uses a collage style to illustrate his books.  We made our own papers using his technique and on Friday, cut the papers into shapes to create our favorite Eric Carle character.  I think even he would be impressed!  Take a look..

Some other activities we did to go alond with his stories:

Grouchy ladybug writing - We wrote about what makes us grouchy

Clumsy Click Beetle - made a click beetle by drawing the shape and adding a clothespin to the back so he could flip

The Butterfly and the Lamb (only illustrated by E. Carle).  We made symmetrical butterflies by dripping paint onto one side of a butterfly and smushing it together.  We created a setting for the butterfly to flutter around. 

The Lonely Firefly - we made these TLC style fireflies from D. Jump's insect unit

Honeybee and the Robber - described the beginning, middle, end in this hive

Animals, Animals - wrote our own insect poems after reading a few samples from this collection of poems, sayings, verses that Eric Carle illustrated.

Going buggy

Boy have we learned a lot about insectsand definitely become Jr. Entomologists!!  We created a schema chart to display what we already knew (or thought we knew) and list any questions we hoped to answer about insects.  We made an entomologist journal to store all of the things we would learn and create about insects. 

We discovered what defines a creature as being an insect.  We learned a song by Dr. Jean to help us learn about the most important characteristics of an insect: 3 body parts (head, thorax, abdomen), 2 antennae, and of course 6 legs.  The kids loved this song and sang it any chance they got.  

We learned that insects have a set of compound eyes.  We used these nifty party favors to help us see the world through compound eyes. 

We observed some real insects in the larva stage.  These are our mealworms.  We will continue to observe them throughout the next 2 stages of their lives.  We had some very active little guys who liked running off of our plates!  We talked a lot about how to make scientific drawings by drawing exactly what we saw.  Even though we think they would look really great with a pink bow or a few rainbow stripes-as jr. entomomologists we had to draw only what we observed.  We can't wait to see how they change as they enter the pupa stage.  I was very impressed that no one was too squimish to hold or have the little crawlies nearby. 

We worked with the chunk -ug this week as well.  We wrote and collected -ug words for our bug jug. 

We learned so much about life cycles over the course of this unit.  I think the kids had an amazing understanding of the 4 main stages of an insect's life.  Here is a life cycle craft we created for butterflies.

Some thinking maps for insects we learned about...



We created a brace map to show the parts of the honebee.  We found out that bees are really smart!  They live very similar to ants.  Both are social and the females are the ones we see doing all of the work.  Both insects also have a queen who is mom to all of the other ants/bees in the colony.  We used pattern block shapes to see how many ways we could fill a hexagon.  Hexagons are the shape bees use to create the cells that make up their honeycomb. 

We read the book Hey Little Ant about a boy who gets ready to step on a tiny ant.  The ant tries to convince him otherwise.  The author leaves us with the boy holding his foot over the ant and asking what he should do.  We created this chart to give reasons for both possible responses and then wrote about what we would do.  I found this idea on Pinterest from these two blogs:  http://plantspress.blogspot.com/2012/04/ants.html and  http://kindersmarties.blogspot.com/2012/03/going-buggy.html?showComment=1332893830355#c5765969549965766049.  I have always loved this book and thought
the craft and chart were absolutely adorable! 

 

On Friday, we made insects using pattern blocks.  While working on these the kids came back to make an insect snack.  They could use any of the materials (licorice, gum drops, marshmallows, chocolate chips, pretzels) to create an insect, but it had to have 3 body parts, 2 antennae, and 6 legs.  Then they had to have a friend check their creation before they could draw what they made and eat it.  This was so much fun!  I loved seeing all of their creations!!  This idea came from Deanna Jump's insect unit. 

 
 

Kevin Henkes

I purchased a Kevin Henkes author study on teachers pay teachers by Ashley Reed.  It had so many great activities and vocabulary cards for his stories!  We loved comparing his stories.  Most of the stories we read had mice as characters.  They dealt with a lot of the same problems real kids face in school and with their friends.  We were able to make lots of text to self, text, and world connections.  Here are some of the activities we did to go along with this author study. 

 

We wrote about our favorite Kevin Henkes story.