January 2, 2012

MFW Highlights: #11 Ii Insect



It's the amazing insect world for me to share this week! We actually did this unit a few weeks ago, but better late than never right? LOL!

We are blessed in that we own some AMAZING books which really made this week even better!

We started off by reading about insects from our Zoobooks...
a treasure from when I was little! My mom kept them and shipped them our way!

Then we examined some bugs (like grasshoppers and ants) in this giant book of Insects and Spiders (and yes, it IS giant!) that Little Britches received a few years ago from a family friend.
What a great resource! Beautiful color pictures and great information--including the type of ants we got for our ant farm!

We discussed about what makes an insect and insect and wrote down some "must have's"...
(yes I know I spelled Antennae wrong! LOL!)

We talked about things relating to ants...
We made some ants the likes that you will never see again...
So much fun making these buggers...I used half of a egg carton for the bugs, then turned the other half into his paint holder. So handy! I let it dry when we were done so we could use it again.

And here are the other odds and ends we did this week...
 Ordinal Number review
A review on clocks, what the numbers mean and where the hands go.

We finished our 10 Commandment Train...

We made some fingerprint bugs...which turned into grasshoppers, ladybugs, butterflies and ants.
This was so simple...just had him put his fingers in paint and then add blobs or streaks on his paper. He would do connected blobs for the ants, a streak for a caterpillar and red thumbprints for ladybugs. Once the paint dried he went back and added legs--making sure he only added 6!--and eyes and spots and anything else to turn them into critters.


We observed our ant farm of course--drew pictures of it in our science notebook...and we had a yummy lunch of Friday--ladybug apple, Squashed Bug Sandwhich, Bug Guts Juice...Delicious!
But out of everything we did, the two most favorite things were...

Making our darling clothespin grasshoppers



Materials:
Clothespins
Googly Eyes (the bigger the better)
Floral Wire
Paint
Glue Gun

1. First paint the clothespins and let them dry. 

2. Then snip the wire and form the legs. Attach to the clothespins with glue gun in the *hole* of the mouth of the pin--that trough works great. 
3. Next shape and add antennae to slanted part of of the clothespin mouth (hot glue again). 
4. Lastly glue on the eyes. 
Now you have the bugliest bug ever! LOL!

and Little Britches getting to type out things about insects on my laptop...
Here is what he typed (as he typed it):

Insect
I lic insect
iNSECTs ARE COOL!
ANT creepe!
The ant
GRASSHOPPER!  aRe Fun to hold.

Can you tell he learned about exclamation points? LOL!

So there is a summary of our Insect week...it was very enjoyable and we made a lot of great memories!


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