Glue Butterflies

One of the things I love most about teaching this time of year is how much my students have grown both in maturity as well as academically.  We are able to do so many more exciting activities and one of my favorite units is our two week study of insects and butterflies.

This simple art project takes a little time to prep but the results are beautiful!

What you will need:
- Black construction paper (I use 9x12in pieces).
- White school glue
- Oil pastels

Step 1:
Using the white glue, create a butterfly outline on the black construction paper.  Allow them to dry overnight.

Step 2:  Students use oil pastels to color in the butterfly wings.  We talk about symmetry and how butterfly wings are the same on each side.

Step 3:  Cut them out and display!

I love how different they all are and how much color they bring to the classroom!  Do you study butterflies in your classroom?

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Five for Friday

I am linking up again this week with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share five things from my week!

 I started off my week by playing hookey!  Ha!  But for a VERY good reason...

The Giants home opener!

 We played some fun subtraction games this week.  This one is a classic and SO easy.  I call it simply "The Subtraction Bag Game."  Catchy, right?!  Place 10 objects in a brown paper bag (I used sea animals).  You'll need a number line from 0-10 and a clothes pin.  Students play in partners.  

Player 1 has the number line with the clothes pin on number 10.

  

Player 2 takes a hand full of sea animals out of the bag.  

Player 1 moves the clothes pin down the number line to find the difference.

Player 2 takes the rest of the sea animals out of the bag to confirm.

They then say the number sentence (10-2=8).

Easy peasy!

 We did Tara West's close read on Butterflies this week.  My kinders have really stepped up their game with our close reading this year.  I have been so impressed by the conversations and the level at which they have been able to use the text as evidence to respond to questions.  If you teach Kindergarten, you have to check out her Close Reading units!

 

 You can't study insects and not observe caterpillars!  Ours came this week and we have been learning all about the life cycle of the butterfly.  I love this time of year!

I introduced my kinders to our new Touchtronic Letters this week!  They LOVED them!

Head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see what everyone else has been up to this week!

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Five for Friday

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for this week's Five for Friday!  

Spring has definitely sprung this week!  We were back at it and spring break feels like a distant memory.  We started our unit on Insects and my kinders couldn't be more excited!

We did these great directed drawings and the kids labeled the parts of the insect.  I led them through the basic insect shape and then they could decide to add wings, a mouth, and other details.  They each turned out so different and wonderful all at the same time.

 

We have an amazing outdoor educator at our school.  For our garden lesson this week, she brought in food from the garden for the kids to build edible insects!  The kids were super engaged and wanted to show off their insect creations.  They got to talk with partners in their small groups to describe what they created and named the parts of their insects.  We then drizzled honey over the top so they could eat their hard work! 

After looking at the work of Eric Carle, we made these insects inspired by the famous author/illustrator!  My good friend Molly over at Lucky to Be in First has a fabulous tutorial on how to prep the paper to make your own Eric Carle inspired artwork.

We are wrapping up a unit on addition this week and of course all of our math activities were insect themed!  I took a little help from some of my bloggy friends for our Math Stations.  The activities are from 

Caitlin Clabby (Kindergarten Smiles) 

and 

Marsha McGuire (A Differentiated Kindergarten).

The activities came from these units:

find it here

find it here

find it here

Baseball Season started.  'Nuff said.

Head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see what everyone else has been up to this week!

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