Mon Mar 12th- Insects & Gage's birthday

Mondays begin with name practice and then the students move on to play with magnetic dolls, duplos and puzzles. I pulled each child aside to work on the letter I and sight words that and Nan-I stamped “that” on their hands. Very simple for my amazing students!! Our star helped with alphabet practice and then we counted to 20 like an insect wither crawling, hopping or flying. After we did blastoff counting and went right into calendar time. We reviewed the date and sang our days of the week in Spanish. Because spring is on its way, I started to teach the spring song to the class then we sang the winter song. Our star helped with dressing our weather friend and the class helped with determining the weather. We boogied to the ABCs and then 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 and Y 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 also worked the sight words- that and Nan. The class practiced the “th” blend and we reviewed the –at word family and we learned that Nan is the bird in our books. Our star chose the wiggle song and then we ate our snacks. We celebrated Gage’s birthday and sang to him. Once the students completed eating, they looked at the books and our star shared their show and tell. 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. Once we talked about those insects, I read the book- I love bugs! We talked about all the bugs mentioned in the story and then I discussed the life cycle of the insect- egg, larva, pupa and adult and I mentioned caterpillars and ladybugs and their life cycles. Each child picked their favorite bug and pretended to be it as we went to the table for our activity. On our worksheet, the student had to find the insects and circle them. Then we colored the front and back which was Izzy Iguana with her igloo and ice cream. 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.