Loving ladybugs!

The students love being entomologists as we continued researching insects.  After catching a few ladybugs last week during our bug hunt, we quickly learned that they give off a pretty strong odor when they feel threatened!  We experienced this first hand in Room 18 and we've finally got rid of the stinky smell!  The students were very excited to hear we were learning about them this week.  We read several non-fiction books about ladybugs and watched a video about their life cycle The Life Cycle of a Ladybug.  The entomologists in Room 18 wrote down facts and drew pictures as they watched the video a few times.  They love to add their new facts to our classroom anchor chart.  

We also read Eric Carle's The Grouchy Ladybug.  It is a story about a grouchy ladybug who challenges a friendly ladybug to a fight over some aphids.  He decides the friendly ladybug isn't big enough to fight and flies around challenging other animals until he encounters a blue whale.  The whale accidentally slaps him with his tail and sends him back to where he started.  The friendly ladybug offers him some aphids and the exhausted grouchy ladybug accepts and thanks him. The kids were very curious to learn why the ladybug was so grouchy in the first place and they came up with some wonderful ideas.  "He didn't get enough sleep" and "he didn't feel loved" were some of their great answers.  We also predicted what we thought happened to the grouchy ladybug after the end of the story.  The overall consensus was that he learned his manners and became a nice ladybug.  We discussed what makes us grouchy and happy and made our own video about it!

We recreated a page from the book to make our own class book.  This story also reviews time and reading clocks to the hour.  Some students decided to make up new characters for our book.

Eden's cat is too friendly to fight the grouchy ladybug!

Will's rhino was too lazy to fight the grouchy ladybug! 

We also worked on a book called, Ladybugs.  We counted ladybugs in groups of 5 and added 1 ladybug at a time to make numbers 11-16.  We then used FaceTime to read our story to our "mystery guest", Mrs. Priske!  She enjoyed hearing the kids "sing" and read the story to her.  Ask your child to read it to you!  They are also very good at counting by 10's and 5's!  We are looking forward to reading to other mystery guests this year.

FaceTime with our mystery guest, Mrs. Priske!

We have also been working on building and memorizing combinations of 5 (i.e. 1+4, 2+3, 5+0).  We found a partner to match "ladybug wings" to make 5.  They had a fun time flying around to find their "best friend" number! Then we made the combinations of spots onto ladybugs for an art project.

Finding our partners to make "5"!