Bugs and Insects

I always loved beginning a unit with Roxie Heart.

When she visited our class with her new Ant dress she gave the children lots of information about insects.  She even had an “ant egg” in her purse.

She shared facts like – insects have 3 parts to their bodies (head, thorax and abdomen).  Insects lay eggs.  Insects have 6 legs.  Most insects have wings, etc.  I took the facts from a simple information book about insects, and then read the book to reinforce the facts.  After that the children made an insect with all the body parts, and wrote 3 facts in a booklet.

Here is a printable copy:

Insect facts

We spent about a week completing a book about bugs that reinforced facts about insects.

Here are the words to this book:

We Like Bugs words

I wrote these words on sentence strips and put them in a pocket chart.   In addition to making and reading this book each day, we read it in the pocket chart.

Here are some bug clipart pictures that I used for the cover:

bugs clipart

We learned 2 songs that also helped reinforce facts about insects.  The first was from the CD Singing Science by Tickle Toon Typhoon –  it is available on Amazon and has lots of great songs for all kinds of science units.  You could just make up a tune that works for you too!

The second song is to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.  I taught the songs separately but we usually sang them one after the other.

Here is a copy to print:

Insects

When I began teaching many years ago, everyone was making copy change books based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  I made them too – on almost every subject!  I still think there is a lot of benefit using a pattern that the children recognize and using lots of sight words to make a book that the children can read.  So I was always looking for different books that could provide a simple pattern to use for copy change books too.  I used this one a lot:

This text for this book starts out

Joshua James likes trucks.  Big trucks, little trucks.  Long trucks, short trucks.  Joshua James just likes trucks.

We did a remake of this book during our transportation unit substituting ‘We’ for Joshua James.  I have done copy change books for dinosaurs, bugs, and animals (that I remember right now!)

Here is a peek at part of the copy change book for bugs:

I tried to make enough class books for each child to take one home at the end of the year.

Here are all the words I used – I added more pages when I had more children in my class – one or two children illustrated the cover instead of a page.

Here are the words to print if you’d like:

Class book words

SPIDERS  TOO!

I usually talked about spiders at Halloween or sometime in the fall, but if I hadn’t I included spider stuff after insects, to help the children remember the difference between insects and arachnids.  There is another great song on Singing Science about Arachnids!

Roxie has a spider outfit too!

She carried a comb in her purse to reinforce the fact that spiders’ bodies are covered with hairs.

I colored these fact cards to show the children, these are the facts that Roxie shared.

Spider facts

Here is the booklet the children used to phonetically write facts about spiders:

Spider facts booklet

We made spider hats!

We also did a fun remake of the Eensy Weensy Spider.  I used the same spelling as a book that we read in class – who knows how to spell Eensy?  Eency?  Eencie?

Gotta love that glitter!!

I hot glued tiny spiders on the end of a popsicle stick for the children to use as a pointer, and taped a pocket inside the cover for them to keep it.  They loved pretending the straw was a water spout.  I actually brought in a small crook piece of a downspout and a big rubber spider tied onto a piece of yarn so we could pull it up the spout and have it fall back down – lots of fun!!

It is fun to do a copy change on this book too – what other insects might go up the water spout?

The red and black ladybug

The hoppy green grasshopper

The clicking noisy cricket

It is a great way to reinforce a fact about each insect – or you could use different words for small and large -

little tiny, itty bitty,  big huge, large giant, etc.  Always looking for ways to incorporate great vocabulary!

I hope all the stress at the end of the year isn’t “bugging” you!

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