bugs bugs bugs!

Tuesday, April 21

Welcome Jolie!

Jolie has joined our afternoon class and we are so excited to have her!

Guess what I'm thinking of....
* I'm thinking of an insect

* It can be yellow, orange, pink, or red
* Some are red with black spots and some have no spots
* They eat 75 aphids per day (aphids are little bugs that suck the sap from plant stems and leaves)
* They flap their wings 85 times a second
* They smell with their feet
* They secrete an oil that smells and tastes bad so enemies won't eat them
* 4300 species
* They are sometimes called ladybirds or ladybeetles

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Ladybug!! Good job! :)

This is the game we played after we welcomed with blocks, had calendar time, and reviewed a little about butterflies.

Then we sang a fun song.

You Are By Ladybug

Tune of You Are My Sunshine

You are my ladybug, my special ladybug.

You eat the aphids to save my plants.

You'll never know bug. How much I need you.

Please don't harm this spotted ladybug.

We made up some great actions, too. Sarah and Jacob and I spotted a ladybug on Wednesday and Sarah said, "Sing him our song!" Then we did. I thought it was cute. :)

Next we read The Very Lazy Ladybug by Isobel Finn and did a great ladybug craft!

Then we completed another page in our butterfly books and finished our butterfly craft from last week.

After snack we reviewed the alphabet and introduced the letter Ss!

The Letter Ss

to the tune of Frere Jacques

The letter S. The letter S. (make ASL sign for letter, showing one hand then the other)

Has a sound. Has a sound. (bring 1 hand to ear and then the other hand to the other ear)

What sound do you make? What sound do you make? (palms facing up, shrug shoulders)

/s/ /s/ /s/! /s/ /s/ /s/! (Make ASL sign for letter, move hand forward and backward for each sound)

The afternoon class had time to color the worksheet also, but the morning class will be coloring it Thursday! :)

Fly Like a Butterfly!!

Today was a day filled with flying and butterfly wishes! We all pretended to be a beautiful butterfly that could fly around the sky. We would stop on a flower for food, or follow the wind up to the top of a tree!



Our morning class welcomed Ian, although most of the kids recognized him. Ian was in our afternoon class and just made the transfer to morning for the last month left of school this year.



Pledge/ Weather/ Calendar followed our pretend butterfly flight!



We sang our rectangle song and then used our bodies to make a rectangle. Our shape was a bit more recognizable in the a.m. pictures because of the class size. But no matter the size we did it and sang our song!! They love this song and I would be surprised if they had not been singing part of it or doing the hand movements for you at home. Are any of you able to sing the rectangle song by heart yet????:)



Next we read It's a Butterfly's Life, by Irene Kelly. This book is almost too full of information about butterflies to cover in one day with pre-school age kids. It is a great book I picked up through Scholastic books. I get so many great books through my daughter Zoe's school, but anyone can go to http://www.scholastic.com/ and order.



After reading and talking about our favorite part, which by the way did you know a butterfly can taste a cupcake by standing on top of it, we made a butterfly. We painted coffee filters with water paints and then let them dry. We did not get time to finish them today and so on Tuesday they will be completed. Before snack we opened our Butterfly books and to do page 2. This time we colored a fence and a doll. We then glued our butterflies below the fence and above the doll. This is great for the kids to practice pointing to the spot before they glue their butterfly there. We all point to the words that are under the pictures and read aloud together. So many say but I can't read, but with repetition they should be able to read this book. After we completed page 2 we read the all the pages we had now finished.



Fundamentals today were reviewing our ABC's and some of the sounds that a letter makes. We introduced the letter Bb to our a.m. class and reviewed it with our p.m. class.

The Letter Bb to the tune of Frere Jacques The letter B. The letter B. (make ASL sign for letter, showing one hand then the other)Has a sound. Has a sound. (bring 1 hand to ear and then the other hand to the other ear)What sound do you make? What sound do you make? (palms facing up, shrug shoulders)/b /b/ /b/! /b/ /b/ /b/! (Make ASL sign for letter, move hand forward and backward for each sound)

We then read a great book to introduce the letter BB. The Berenstain's B Book. What a hard book to read, well it is after a few times!!!! Miss Laura was having a good laugh at my expense!!

PLAYTIME!!!!!

a beautiful butterfly!

Today, as we welcomed everyone to preschool, we made patterns with the color bears.

Then, after calendar, we talked about butterflies! I asked the children where butterflies come from. Some thought they might come from flowers or bushes, one answer was, "a caterpillar goes in his house and comes out as a butterfly" (impressive!), and another answer even involved the chrysalis (wow!!). Then we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, to find out where they come from. While we read we did these hand motions to help us remember.

*Egg - hand clutched in a fist

*Caterpillar - index finger extended, scrunched, extended, scrunched

*Chrysalis - index finger of one hand wrapped by other hand

*Butterfly - interlock thumbs, wiggle fingers, and do flying motion

More Butterfly Facts

Insects

3 body parts: head, thorax, abdomen

6 legs

2 sets of wings

2 antennae - helps to feel, smell, and explore.

Active during the day and sleep at night

Next we pretended to be caterpillars that turned into butterflies, then we made super cute caterpillars (in an ABAB pattern). They are hanging on the wall of the preschool for everyone to see. :)

Then we began our Butterfly Books that teach prepositional phrases (over, under, above, next to). We'll be working on these over the next few weeks.

After snack we reviewed numbers and made our number 9 cards. Then we reviewed letters and introduced Bb.

The Letter Bb

to the tune of Frere Jacques

The letter B. The letter B. (make ASL sign for letter, showing one hand then the other)

Has a sound. Has a sound. (bring 1 hand to ear and then the other hand to the other ear)

What sound do you make? What sound do you make? (palms facing up, shrug shoulders)

/b/ /b/ /b/! /b/ /b/ /b/! (Make ASL sign for letter, move hand forward and backward for each sound)