five for friday (sunday edition)

Only 2 more fridays after this one folks!
Whew!
I might be a little excited.
But then I think about all the awards days planning (trying something a little different...)
plus all our festivities for the last 10 days, but we can do this!
So here's my week!

the butterfly unit is from Linda Kamp and the rest is from me. I haven't posted the quad stuff yet because we are still using and testing it!

and here's the winners from my growing bundles giveaways last week!

congrats y'all!

currently...already? April?

I'm linking up with Farley today for currently!

Are y'all as tired of April Tomfoolery as me?!

Though I did get my kids pretty good today with Denise's Lirpa Loof! And if you don't want to go on a hunt, check out the original Lirpa Loof on youtube! It was a joke in the early 80s on BBC! And it's funny!

listening to reruns

loving Lost-we just finished Season 1. yea, 10 years after the fact!

thinking about next year. It's a teacher illness you know. do y'all have classes like I do? Great one year, questionable the next? I'm getting worried! I love my kiddos this year, so what will next year hold!? eek!

wanting taxes to be over. Hubs gets all up in arms about money. I don't even mess with it! So I don't like tax season because he doesn't. And I sure don't like paying!

needing the next 2 weeks to come on a long! Come on April 18!

and the last one speaks for itself. I would really like to find some research that shows what a waste it is to have kids be at school at 7am! We never start anything for the first hour...waste...

and I also posted a springy little freebie on Owls today! Go check it out!

up close and personal with our insects

I have the best tool to share with y'all today.
It's a microscope, but it connects to my computer through a USB cord (so you could connect to other things as well, I just don't have any other things!)

it's called the Digital Blue microscope. It's probably not the greatest microscope in the world, but I love that I can take photos, video, and the scope is removable for looking at things that I may not want to pick up! No, I'm not reviewing this baby! It was inherited with my room, but it's awesome! I found a few online!

Here are some of our pics from this week! Some were alive, others not.so.much. 

feel free to use any of these with your students!

It's also kinda fun to look at other things too! and completely kid friendly!

We've also had plenty of other life cycle fun with my Intro to Insects unit and Mealworms on Parade!!

takin notes on insect activity while it's still nice and warm!

found lots of insects in the neglected garden!

Wednesday we released our painted lady butterflies. This one wanted to stay!

I love this! We made birth certificates for our mealworms and he even made their little habitat!

If you are looking for lots of fun with insect life cycles that's super hands-on, try these!

and tomorrow we are using Cara's Hey Little Ant writing activity. We have an early release at lunch so it better take hours! 

our week in pictures! and an insect freebie

We had our annual insect invasion this past few weeks! I've been super happy with the insect knowledge my kiddos have about the basics! I mean, they knew that insects have 6 legs...happy teacher!

We completed our baby mealworms birth certificates. Of course we had to backdate them! I tell them that they are parents now and when we get them out of the "house" they have to keep an eye on them...you wouldn't believe how many babies we have lost in years past! So far so good! Only one has wandered into the street (aka. fell off the desk!)

Isn't this a fun little scientific drawing! We will call this child kaleidoscope...

this activity is from my Mealworms on Parade unit

describing our luscious lollies

good vs evil mudges! from Amy's Mudge pack

I chose to begin the year with characters and character traits. I absolutely love Amanda's Character Traits unit! Using the terms inner and outer traits has changed my life! So easy for them! I am using our first author of the month, Kevin Henkes, and it is just perfection! I alternate minilessons between our basal (Iris and Walter and Henry and Mudge stories) and Kevin Henkes mouse books. All are so good for talking about characters. We even did character traits for Lady Liberty on 9/11

working on punctuating ALL of our sentences! from Amy's sentences pack

a gallery walk...look we are reading the BFG!

see! We are working on adjectives! haha

and when this is beside the tarantula cage...

here's what happens! gimme those caterpillars!

Now get your insect life cycle freebie! It's a 3 page cut and paste life cycle diagram plus the writing piece I used this week! I loved how they turned out! I had the paste both onto a piece of brown construction paper to display with our birth certificates! And one option doesn't say mealworm in case you want to use a different insect!

click pictures to download

week one with the mealworms plus chick eggs, crickets, a caterpillars!

Well, we are officially opening up a zoo!
not really
but it feels that way
we have always used several insects for observation during our life cycle unit
it just seemed to happen all at once this year!
Everything came within 2 days
rather than spaced out like we had planned
but I am nothing if not flexible!

So first things first-we began with our mealworm study
the caterpillars were fine in their cup
the crickets were in the closet
and the incubator was warming up waiting on the eggs

I thought I would try to supply to with some management tips if you alo teach life cycles!
one: everything needs a home and a label!

all eggs get a number and an X and 0 for turning purposes

all mealworms are in a personal habitat labeled with parent names

these are solo cups and lids. 

I've had lots of inquiries! 

Caterpillars actually stay in the container they arrive in. If you order a butterfly kit, this is how it will arrive.

You transfer them to the butterfly tent when they form their chrysalis by attaching the paper towel to the side of the tent. 

and for the lap of luxury

here's the cricket condo!

We attached 2 liter bottles to each side of a central container

one side is filled with moist soil for egg laying (which was all day long!)

and the other with dry sand

if the middle is the "play area" or "living room" 

haha

it just has paper towels and pieces of cardboard to prevent the inevitable cannibalism

now, don't get me wrong

it's a lot of work on my part

but if my class was a tad more well behaved, it would have been easy to do this with them!

they did set up their mealworm habitats

this is the creature they interact with the most

and they are by far the cleanest!

and they can survive falls from desks

and they can't hop too quickly to get away

you get the picture

so here's a peek at what we've done this week in science

these are our birth announcements

Next year I will do some for each insect

but this year they are all mealworms

these are included in my file as well as everything below

and lots of observing and recording

I admit this student may be slightly confused about her senses

she just came last week

it's not my fault! I kid...

so if you'd like to observe some little creatures with a complete metamorphosis

mealworms are definitely the way to go!

widely available at your local pet store

cheap in large quantities

and clean and easy!

I'm also adding a few more ideas to my unit as we go

I keep finding new ways to explore these boogers

so snatch it up now!