Monday March 14- insects

For the start of our week, we did a scissor practice worksheet and then went upstairs for playing with my new wooden blocks set and animals. The boys had a great time with the new set. Everyone was able to create their own railroad tracks and we had enough trains for everyone. Benjamin helped us with our letter review and then we did our calendar time. We counted like insects – flying and crawling around the room up to 31. We reviewed our Spanish numbers to 16 and then we did blastoff counting. Days of the week and months of the year followed with weather time and alphabet boogie after that. I introduced the letter I and Izzy Iguana who thinks insects are interesting. She would like to live in a igloo and eat ice cream. We learned that I is a vowel and it helps us make words like our other vowels- A, E, and O. (we haven’t learned U yet.) I has two sounds – its name and I like in icky or igloo. The sign for the letter I is your pinkie finger in the air which was simple for them to do. I read the students some words that begin with the letter I, but that list isn’t very long  We learned a new sight word- is. We also reviewed all the words that we have learned so far.
Benjamin helped us with our wiggle song and we had snack and book time. Benjamin shared his show and tell and then we were on to our lesson on insects.
I started the lesson by talking about the insects around us and I asked the students what insects that they have seen before. I then went on to teach them the three parts to an insect- the head, thorax and abdomen. We noticed that the thorax is where the legs and wings are and that all insects have 6 legs. We did a role play by using an insect poem that I had and then we discussed the helpful and harmful insects in a garden. Butterflies, praying mantis, bees and ladybugs were our helpful bugs but potato beetles, aphids, mosquitoes and grasshoppers were our harmful ones. Each child picked their favorite bug and pretended to be it as we went to the table for our activity. Each child practiced their letter I- capital and lowercase and then they colored the picture to go along with the letter practice. I read the “I” story about Iggy Iguana and how he wanted to go to a cold place because he lived on an island so we went and visited his cousin Izzy in Iceland. Each child reviewed the sounds of the letter I with me and got their stamp on their hands.