Homeschool Creations

Friday, July 23, 2010

Preschool Corner ~ Getting Buggy

A friend of ours {hi Catherine!!} invited us over this week to do a ‘mini-camp’ of sorts. We spent a few mornings over her house with all of our kids {preschool up to 4th grade} and had fun learning about a few bugs, making some crafts, creating some yummy treats and just having fun. Cindy from Along the Way joined us one of the days too.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera on the first day, but made up for it on the second day by taking over 100 picture. I’m so glad we have a digital camera. :) The first day we learned about ladybugs and on our second day we talked about ants.

LadyBugs

Catherine started off each morning with a devotional time…and we read a book about the insect we were studying. After we sat down to make a craft ~ some cute little bug jars from Oriental Trading.

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The kids also made some ladybug beanbags {felt circles filled with rice} and glued some spots on them. They weren’t quite dry enough to play a game with, so we had to use plain beanbags to play ‘catch the aphid’, where the kids had to toss a beanbag on a giant leaf and try to land on one of the green foam dots.

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Snack for our ladybugs was a yummy cookie that the kids frosted and put little candy dots on {not healthy…but fun!}.

Ants

After devotions on ‘Ant Day’ we read Are You an Ant? and even I learned some fun facts about ants ~ did you know that ants can stroke an aphid? That they have two stomachs? The Are You? series are great books…and ones that we’ll be checking into more.

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Craft time was an ant made out of egg cartons. The kids painted them black and used pipe cleaners for legs and antennae. 

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For snack we made anthills {aka chocolate pudding and crushed graham crackers} and the kids added chocolate covered raisins for the queen ants and mini chocolate chips for the worker ants.

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Right after we finished our story time, we took three lids outside to see if we could attract ants. One lid had a chunk of watermelon in it, one had water, and one had some apple juice.

After about an hour we went back down to check out the caps to see if we had any ant action. The kids guessed that the watermelon would have ants on it ~ and it did! The water had no visitors and the apple juice had a few ants. Can you see the little visitors?

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Stories & Books We Used

These are some of the books that we read at home to learn a little more about our insect friends.

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12 Comments:

  • This is so much fun! I love all that you did! That little bean bag is adorable:-).

    By Blogger Susana, At July 23, 2010 at 6:35 AM  

  • What a fun week of camp! Love the bean bags!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At July 23, 2010 at 7:58 AM  

  • A girl after my own heart, picture taking galore. Aren't digital cameras a real blessing?
    I love bug "units" so much, though I am not crazy about bugs themselves. When I worked at the Montessori I always did a bug unit during the summer. As a matter of fact I am in the planning stages this week and we've been observing our fruit flies. I appreciate the list of bug books, as I was trying to find some new ones.
    I've been wanting to do an ant attraction experiment for a while, thanks for the reminder, it will go great with the bug unit.

    Love the snack idea, I think I will do that the same day we do our ants on a log (peanut butter bread cut into sticks, with raisin ants).

    Very cute activities!!!

    By Blogger kewkew, At July 23, 2010 at 1:49 PM  

  • I just added all of those books to my wishlist on Amazon. They look great. Looks like ya'll had an amazing time. We studied ants a little a couple of weeks ago, but my little one wasn't too thrilled about it. She had been bitten by ants on the fourth of July and it was still fresh in her mind.

    By Blogger Unknown, At July 24, 2010 at 7:30 AM  

  • Looks like you are having a lot of fun enjoying the summer season.

    By Blogger Jada Rocks, At July 24, 2010 at 3:09 PM  

  • I love all your ideas - so much fun and quite simple really! But I have a question... what do you do with all the crafts??? That one thing keeps me from doing crafts alot - I already struggle keeping a clean house and add a couple of crafts a week or even one a month and with 4 kids... it adds up quickly!! I would really appreciate your thoughts on this!

    By Blogger Jennifer, At July 25, 2010 at 1:08 AM  

  • I don't keep them. :) We save them for a bit, but otherwise, they quickly find a new home in the trash can. :) I don't do clutter well and some of the crafts are 'save-worthy' like our abc crafts, but otherwise things like our little ant friends will move along to a new home soon. :)

    By Blogger Jolanthe, At July 25, 2010 at 8:01 AM  

  • What fantastic ideas!!

    By Blogger Amy @ Jesus, Coffee & Fitness, At July 25, 2010 at 7:49 PM  

  • How much fun!! I love the mini camp idea and everything you guys did!

    By Blogger Kami, At July 26, 2010 at 3:22 PM  

  • Love the ant-hill snack--we are going to try this one at our house, thanks for the ideas!!

    By Blogger cutiepiescustomcreations, At July 31, 2010 at 1:44 PM  

  • Love the ant-hill snack--we are going to try this one at our house, thanks for the ideas!!

    By Anonymous cutiepiescustomcreations, At December 15, 2010 at 1:00 PM  

  • Looks like you are having a lot of fun enjoying the summer season.

    By Anonymous Forest Rose, At December 15, 2010 at 1:00 PM  

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