We’ve been learning about bugs: butterflies, ladybugs, grasshoppers, spiders, and cicadas!
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The children have begun to bring bugs in that they’ve discovered on their walks. Here we have a black and yellow millipede in this critter case.
Examining cicada shells in a bug viewer. We are (okay, I am) very excited about the emergence of the 17-year cicadas this spring! We’ve been talking about cicadas a lot lately and I will put up a more detailed post later.
Be sure to check out our previous post about bug works in the language, math, and science areas of the classroom.
On the Fine Motor Shelf
We have a bit of a buggy theme going on in our Fine Motor and Art areas these days.
This is our fine motor shelf. We decided to go with a black and red color theme in honor of ladybugs.
Pouring black beans, on a red tray.
Pouring red water, on a black tray! This is quite tricky. You have to pour to the line into these flimsy plastic cups without knocking them over. Then, pour the colored water back into the narrow mouthed pitcher without a funnel. You need some serious motor coordination to master this.
I found these beautiful flower bowls a few years ago. Add a butterfly clothespin and some yellow pompoms, and poof! you’ve got a little pollination setup. This activity was inspired by this.
This is simply putting butterfly clips onto pipe cleaners. The children seem to prefer mixing and matching the colors with this work. I found the clips at the Dollar Store.
Tonging and matching little bugs. (Yes, one of these is a crustacean. I didn’t have enough plastic bugs the right size so I made an executive decision to go with another invertebrate!)
Spooning sparkly pompoms into this little divided house tray. I’m sure some of you could come up with a nifty name for this work like “how many bugs in the house?”, except much better.
I LOVE it when the kids come up with a way of using the material that I had never thought of. He stood up the house tray vertically and spooned a pom pom into each compartment. Challenging!
Love this! Clipping teeny bug clothespins onto a silk flower stem that I stuck into a flower pot. I had a five year old commenting how tricky it is to pinch these little clips.
On the Art Shelf
Pin punching butterflies and decorating with little dots.
We’ve been doing so much brush work the past few months that I think our little kiddos are ready for a more advanced painting technique! We’ll be learning about wet-on-wet watercolor painting this month. Perfect for painting this glorious Monarch butterfly. We also have a few other insect coloring pages for the kids to use this technique on. I found the butterfly printout here.
I like to have a lacing work out all year long in our preliminary sewing sequence. This time we’re making a ladybug out of our plate. I find the plates to be much easier to use than cutting out shaped lacing cards.
We’ve added a few spring themed paper punches to the art shelf for the children to decorate their work with.
Found this little gem at the dollar store! It’s brought a new point of interest to our Care of the Environment materials. Here’s a slightly fancier one on Amazon.
I was surprised to find that I had collected so many buggy posters over the years. Most of these are now decorating our walls. It was tough deciding which ones to display!
Be sure to check out our previous post about bug works in the language, math, and science areas of the classroom.
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Seemi holds a Master's degree in education, and an AMS Early Childhood credential. She has twenty years of experience in Montessori as a teacher, school administrator, and school owner. Seemi is the founder of TrilliumMontessori.org.