How To Spittle Like A Bug

We have been talking about how different insects protect themselves; some use camouflage; some taste bad; some look really scary; some stay in large groups, etc. 

The spittle bug uses a clever way of hiding by covering his body with bubbles.  After talking about this and looking at lots of pictures of spittle bugs, we were able to giving it a try by creating our own spittle bug bubble toy.

1.       Take an empty water or seltzer bottle and cut off the bottom.

2.       Discard the bottle cap (of course by discard  I mean put it in your art center)

3.       Cover the bottom with a piece of towel or washcloth held on by a large rubber band

4.       .Dip the bottom in bubble solution-we used Dawn dish liquid and water

5.       Blow out-talking about blowing out is key-had few children who inhaled and got a mouth full of soapy water.

The children each held a plastic insect and tried to “hide” it in the bubble “spittle”. This was great fun.  Now they are all on the look out for the clues that spittle bugs are hiding in their gardens.

This was such fun that I had to  bring it home for my own kids.  My seventh grader loved it.

Two Bad Ants, But Two Great Children's Books!

We are fully immersed in our insect study and exploring many wonderful books both non-fiction and fiction. 

We just read a great book, Two Bad Ants by Chris Van  Allsburg.  Chris takes the reader on an adventure from the perspective of the ants.  The children had a lot of fun deciphering the items referred to by the ants such as the hole in the wall that made them feel funny, being an electrical outlet that they had crawled into or the hot brown bitter liquid being coffee.  It was a long story, but my four year olds were riveted.

 

During the book the ants collect these special crystals.  By the end of the story we had determined that they were talking about sugar.  We had to see for ourselves so we each took some sugar in our hands and really looked at it.  Then we used magnifying glasses to see the individual crystals.  This of course led to tasting-a good scientist does use all of her senses.

Another wonderful story to include in a collection about insects is Crickwing by Janell Cannon.

Again, initially I thought it would be too long, but it keeps the reader engaged with suspense.  Crickwing isn’t very nice after being the brunt of teasing himself, so this story can lead into some wonderful discussions of bullying and how to treat others.  He learns an important lesson and does well in the end.  My class was very intrigued with the army ants mentioned in the book, so we will be researching that insect next week.

Share with me your favorite insect story.

Counting Insects-Learning Math Through Play

I collect small things that children can count.  I love to pair these interesting items up with dice and make games.  There is an exciting element to rolling a die and rooting for a certain number. 

Children learn a great deal about counting and number sense by experiencing numbers in various forms.  On a die you see numbers represented in dots.  With experience you start to see an image of three or five or six in your mind which makes adding, subtracting, estimating and other number operations easier.  Plus, rolling dice 

is fun.

 

This week I combined small butterfly erasers, cut up pipe cleaner “caterpillars” and small plastic lady bugs.  We were playing a game where you roll a die and then add that many bugs of your choice to the plant paper- this was simply a piece of clip art that I enlarged onto 8 x 11 paper.  

  

Toward the end of the week, we changed it so that each number on the die represented a certain insect. If you rolled a 1 or 6 you chose that many butterflies; a 2 or 5 and you took that many caterpillars and a 3 or 4 had you taking ladybugs.  The children took turns rolling and collecting bugs until they had one insect on each leaf.  When this happened we each sorted our bugs into groups to see which kind each person had the most of and the least of in their groups.

 

This simple math game had the children sorting, counting, recognizing numbers, comparing, organizing, practicing rote counting, counting one object at a time, visualizing number groups, turn taking and more.  Not to mention the science as one of my students said, “these two ladybugs are eating those tiny bugs we read about….what were they called again?”  So we talked about aphids while the next few people took their turns.

 

Playing the game with my students was a fun and easy way to assess many of their math skills in order to see where I can best scaffold their future learning experiences.