Insects and a Freebie

Hello friends!
Maybe some of you have noticed but I have made some (not many) adjustments to my blog... what do you think?? Mainly I added a Pinterest and Twitter icon that I made all by myself! AND I got the images to link to the right places AND I got those images to be next to each other! lol. Oh the small achievements that make me happy! Follow me on Pinterest and Twitter with a simple little click now! (I hope) Also, I realized today that my Classroom Pictures link is broken (wonder how long that has been) and I wanted to put up new pictures of my classroom anyway SOO I was thinking about making a linky party about it, what do you think?? I figure that most are like me and have made many changes to our classrooms since the beginning of the year AND it would be pretty cool to see others' bulletin boards with actual work on them, right? I'll do it if someone gives me a thumbs up! =)

Ok, on to Insects! I love Spring because insects are all around us and the students get so excited. We have many caterpillars making their way around our campus and under the breezeways. I popped in to work last Thursday and I saw 4 chrysalises (?) hanging... I hope they are still there on Monday!

We are all done with our insect unit so I wanted to share a few things today and a few more tomorrow...
We start each and every insect unit with Dr. Jean's Insect Song. Do you know it? It goes like this:
(to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes)
Head, Thorax, Abdomen, Abdomen,
Head, Thorax, Abdomen, Abdomen,
Eyes, and mouth, antennas, two!
Six legs, and that's an insect for you!

It's the best! I love it, the students love it, anyone who walks in while we are singing loves it! AND, the best part of it all, the parts of an insect are taught with a little tune! hehe.

After we sing the song a million times, we make a generic insect and label it with all of the parts we have just learned. We only put 3 legs on it because we are looking at the insect from the side, of course! We just used pom-poms, pipe cleaners and LOTS of glue. It's hard to stick on those pom poms and it's the only time that I regret teaching my students, "just a dot, not a lot," because I find pom-poms all over the floor and head-less insects on papers! hahaha. Also, the labels are just paper. If you'd like a copy of the labels, just leave a comment below with your email and I'll get them to you.

Next, we teach different kinds of Insects butterflies, ladybugs, ants and bees: (more on that tomorrow). We also teach about the lifecyles of each. Grab a copy of my Lifecycles interactive bulletin board:

Included in the freebie are the lifecycles for ants, bees, butterflies, ladybugs, crickets and dragonflies.

Here you can see the bee lifecycle (the only one in clip art). I printed the pages, glued the blank ones onto a blank poster and laminated everything. Then I placed velcro on everything, taught the different lifecycle stages and put the poster up. The students come over to the board and manipulate the board all on their own! It is super cute to see them acting like teachers while I watch and think, "Do I really sound like that?"

Grab your freebie at my TpT store...

If you download it, please let me know!
Ok, friends, don't forget to enter my giveaway AND come back tomorrow for some more on INSECTS!