Kindergarten in April

Welcome to Kindergarten in April

Our themes this month are Insects and Arachnids!

Below are out insect photos...

click here to see arachnids

We ordered some caterpillars from our school supply store, and we watched them go from tiny caterpillar to fat caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly.

Here we are checking out our tiny friends...

All but one has emerged as a butterfly, so we finally released them.

Caterpillar Snack....

This is one of our favorites... sliced banana dipped in sprinkles... add thin licorice for antennae and a chocolate syrup branch and eat - yummy!!

Last year made peanut butter playdo, then made peanut butter bugs with it. We used pretzels for wings, legs, and antennae... we made sure they had 3 body parts, 6 legs, and antennae before we ate them!!

Our playdo is made from peanut butter, powdered milk, and honey, and tasted delicious!!

Another fun project we did was insect finger puppets.... we used a rubber glove and cut the fingers off... then we cut and decorated wings, and Miss Shaynee hot glued them together for us

Insect Math....

We made bug glyphs.... see if you can decode our pictures using the chart on the right

3 of our favorite projects and activities

	This was a 2 part project.... we did blotto painting and talked about the symmetry of butterflies... when the paintings dried we made them into butterflies. To show the stages of a butterfly, we used tapioca for the egg, a spiral macaroni for the butterfly, colored cotton for the chrysalis, and a bow macaroni for the butterfly......
This was just a fun take home game... we colored a picture of a ladybug, then Miss Shaynee put them into a sheet protector, attached a bag of dots and we got to play tic-tac-toe at school and at home with them.
	Here is one of our friends showing off the queen bee crown she chose to make (when we graphed the type of bee we would like to be), and playing with the bug magnets that we have.
We made insect shadow puppets at the middle table, then when we came in from recess we had a shadow puppet show.

Here is another multi part project that we did... first we used cut tissue paper to create an outdoor scene on a large piece of paper.

Next we painted our foam insect stamps with q-tips, then stamped them onto our scenes.

The next 2 days at the language arts table, we wrote about our favorite insects.. what they are and why. Miss Shaynee mounted these and glued them onto our project.

This one says, "My favorite insect is a butterfly. I like them because they are colorful."

We took several days and made a caterpillar (from tissue circles) and then another day we drew butterflies with black permanent marker. We put on tissue squares and sprayed with water. At the language arts table, we wrote what we learned about insects. Miss Shaynee mounted everything for us on a green paper.

We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, then wrote what we would like to eat if we were hungry. We mounted our writings onto a yellow caterpillar segment and made a caterpillar bulletin board.

We read, The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, by Eric Carle, then we made click beetles of our own. We added a baby food jar lid taped to the back to make the clicking sound.

Part of one of our favorite songs....

There are 3 kinds of bees in the hive

There are workers, there are drones

And the Queen, all alone

There are 3 kinds of bees in the hive

We tasted honey, then graphed the results

We made dirt and worms when learned that snails, slugs, and worms are not insects because they don't have 3 body parts or 6 legs...

Mud = chocolate pudding

Dirt = smashed oreos

Worms = Gummys

First we smashed the oreos to make the dirt, then we poured it into the cup with the mud....

Add a few worms, and enjoy!!!

In language arts this month, we played a fun game called Wheel of Fortune. Miss Shaynee writes a sentence with lines, then we need to guess the letters. We spin a wheel and earn money for correct letters, and the winner got to choose out of the prize box. This is a great game because we have to read sight words, sound out words, and visualize the letters that are missing from words!!

Although we are done with our letters of the week, we are now reviewing 2 letters each week. One week in April was Ff, Gg and Hh... Here is what we came up with when asked to think about and draw a picture of things with a hole....

and Ff for fading... we put white paper shapes on construction paper, hung them backwards in our windows (facing the sun)....we took them down about a week later and peeled off the paper...our construction paper had faded.

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