Home Preschool: Bugs
This preschool unit has been an interesting challenge for me, as I do not share Pumpkin's love of bugs. She is fascinated by them, and names most of the ones we see (we currently have one stuck in our house named Screw, after dadd'y screwdriver), while I have had to mask my horror of spiders and other creepy crawlies. But it has been fun to see her interest in this subject, and I hope to encourage it!
Here are the activities we did:
We made caterpillars out of pipe cleaners and Cheerios. We even got Sweet Pea in on this craft! Though she mostly just ate hers. But who can blame her?
For our ladybug craft, I had Pumpkin paint a paper plate red, while I cut pieces out of black construction paper. Then I had her glue them on where she wanted. For our bumblebee, I had her paint a plate yellow, then used a pompom to paint black stripes. And finally, on the right, we made a leaf, and I had Pumpkin use pompoms to make small, medium, and large caterpillars.
Here are the videos we watched:
Amazing Animals: Army Ant
Amazing Animals: Beetle
Amazing Animals: Monarch Butterfly
Sometimes if Pumpkin had questions about a particular insect, I'd find additional videos to watch. For example, she was curious about cricket sounds, since we live in the city and don't normally hear them, so we found some cricket videos.
All in all, it was a really fun topic for my little nature lover! She loved observing all the bugs we found in our house and outside on our walks. And it was great for me to slow down my pace, and take time to watch a ladybug crawl across a leaf with her!
Here are the activities we did:
We made caterpillars out of pipe cleaners and Cheerios. We even got Sweet Pea in on this craft! Though she mostly just ate hers. But who can blame her?
For our ladybug craft, I had Pumpkin paint a paper plate red, while I cut pieces out of black construction paper. Then I had her glue them on where she wanted. For our bumblebee, I had her paint a plate yellow, then used a pompom to paint black stripes. And finally, on the right, we made a leaf, and I had Pumpkin use pompoms to make small, medium, and large caterpillars.
Pumpkin colored this counting coloring book, which can be found for free here. I also found some free bug coloring pages from the same source!
We are lucky enough to live near a butterfly house, so we checked out some butterflies! We also got to see some still in the chrysalis.
Here are the books we read:
Diary of a Spider, by Doreen Cronin (Ok, maybe not all spiders are scary...)
Amazing Animals: Army Ant
Amazing Animals: Beetle
Amazing Animals: Monarch Butterfly
Sometimes if Pumpkin had questions about a particular insect, I'd find additional videos to watch. For example, she was curious about cricket sounds, since we live in the city and don't normally hear them, so we found some cricket videos.
All in all, it was a really fun topic for my little nature lover! She loved observing all the bugs we found in our house and outside on our walks. And it was great for me to slow down my pace, and take time to watch a ladybug crawl across a leaf with her!
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