Frog and Butterfly Fun!

Update!
A sweet little guy brought in 2 tiny frogs for us to watch! We were fascinated....ALL DAY LONG!

I introduced our frog unit with the BrainPop Jr. video on frogs. After the video, students wrote down things they learned about frogs in their notebook.  They also got poems to add to their poetry journals.  Each day we watched a short YouTube video on frogs and they continued to add to their notes. We also read a fiction and nonfiction book about frogs each day. One day they wrote down the life cycle stages in their journal. 

   

I read a fiction and nonfiction book and passed out a mini frog to each student for a story souvenir. 

Green Wilma by Tedd Arnold is my very favorite fiction book to read when we study frogs.  It is an adorable story! The students think a little girl is dreaming about being a green frog but it turns out quite differently! Click the picture or here to check it out on Amazon!

We graphed whether or not we liked frogs.  It was unanimous! The students all like frogs!  They were very excited as this was our first unanimous vote ever!

We played "Lily Pad Hop" which reviewed parts of 10, addition and subtraction facts.  I played "Five Little Speckled Frogs" while the students "hopped" around. When I stopped the music, students hopped to a lily pad and had to solve the math fact.  We played through the song twice. They wanted to keep playing but we had to move on!

Our inflatable frog life cycle that greeted the students the morning we began our frog studies.

Drawing and labeling the life cycle.

   

Frog hoppin' fun! Students made their frog hop three different times, measuring the distance and recording it.  The frog that went the farthest two out of three times was the winner.

   

A little extra measuring practice after the race was over.

  

If you are interested in any of the activities from above, click here to check out Frog Hoppin' Fun!

I introduced butterflies almost the same way except I had students guess what was in the package that was delivered to our classroom.  I purchase our caterpillars every year from Insect Lore on Amazon.

We wrote in our journals the day the caterpillars arrived.  We wrote about their arrival, what they look like and drew a picture.  We will add to our journal occasionally and as we notice changes. I forgot to snap pictures of the students journals.

We will begin studying butterflies next week.  We will watch the BrainPop Jr. video, read the books below, receive a butterfly souvenir and do pretty much the same activities as we did with frogs.

If you are interested in checking out my butterfly activities, click here to see Butterfly Flyin' Fun!

Thanks for hoppin' or flyin' by!