Flyin' Butterflies

Here are some more activities we did during our butterfly studies.  Click here to check out another blog post I did earlier about frogs and butterflies!

This was a picture from last year. I forgot to take one this year before they began.  I put all the things they will need to build their life cycle on a paper plate and let them build it without help from me.

In their chrysalis. I hope they wait until Monday to hatch so we can see it happen!

Click here or on the picture to check this activity out!

Thanks for stopping by!

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!

Butterfly Fun, National Sibling Day and Freebie Animal Activity!

During our study of butterflies

this week we made edible life cycles.

I gave each table a plate of goodies.

They had to build the life cycle.

I gave no directions, other than to

use what was on the plate to create.

They did awesome!

I found Dollar General brand

Sweet Smiles Spearmint Leaves,

used vanilla baking chips for the eggs,

Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers, Tootsie Rolls,

and Wal-Mart Great Value Fruit Slices.

This was a huge hit as you can imagine!

We also created the life cycle out of 

art materials and wrote about the stages.

Of course we are writing in our 

journals every other day on 

our caterpillars progress.

We spent the day on Thursday 

celebrating siblings. It was National

Sibling Day. This was so much fun

and the kiddos had a lot to say about

their siblings!

We read the story 

Pain and the Great One

by Judy Blume.

We read a poem and nonfiction passage, 

answered questions, drew pictures of 

us with our sibling(s) and wrote a friendly

letter to one of our siblings.

Here we graphed if we had

no siblings, only sisters, only

brothers or both.

We also found out how many

sisters we had altogether, how

many brothers we had altogether

and how many of both we had.

 Then we had a little sibling rivalry,

playing an even and odd math game.

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If you'd like to check it out, it is in my store. Click here!


       
In the next few weeks, we will begin our animals unit. I created this to use with Zoobooks Magazines.  I hope you can use it too! Click here!

Thanks for stopping by!