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Ideas by Carol Hartery

Bugs and Butterflies


   

Carol Hartery's
Creativity and Standards

Carol Hartery is The Learning Tree Store's resident guru of teacher magic.  Carol is able to incorporate and adapt diverse teaching materials into creative   hands-on activities,  lessons, games, that engage both teachers and students. Carol always incorporates music, movement, fiction and nonfiction into her training.  Most importantly, these activities correlate to state and national early-childhood standards.

Carol has done teacher training locally and nationally and the responses to her presentations are always outstanding.  Carol has created over 300 original presentations and has presented over 1000 workshops since 1997. After working with Carol, teachers are able to turn fly swatters, cookie sheets, clothes pins, socks, border trims, boxes, etc. into a whole new set of teaching tools.

Bugs and Butterflies

Your classroom will be buzzing with excitement as you integrate a "buggy" theme into your curriculum.
The paper quilts shown here are more than a craft. They also meet a wide range of math standards. As you examine the photographs notice the patterns that are visible horizontally, vertically, and even diagonally. When you look at the ladybug quilt can you tell how many students like a red ladybug the best? How many orange ladybugs are there? Are there more orange or yellow ladybugs?
Now examine the butterfly quilt. Which color butterfly has the most? the least? Patterning, counting, comparing, and math language are just some of the math standards we have addressed. We folded our ladybugs and butterflies in half before we added spots to them. What do you notice about the spots on each side of the ladybugs and butterflies? Here's your chance to talk about lines of symmetry. You've addressed another math  standard.
                                                                                     

We used bug paper to create the ladybug and butterfly quilts. There are additional designs in the packet that can be used to create a bee quilt, an ant quilt, and more. Notice the ladybug trim around the edges of the ladybug quilt. Doesn't it just finish the quilt off so nicely? 

As your students listen to music from Insects, Bugs & Squiggly Things and Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!

they'll be singing, moving, and learning about insects. They'll also enjoy singing "Buzzing in the CDGarden" from Peter and Ellen Allard's Pizza Pizzazz CD . Choose 5 students to hold up bee props created from bee cutouts and dowels as they sing the song. 

You may want to give each student 10 bee stickers, a strip of flowers border, 5 milk caps, one sheet of  12" x 18" construction paper, and the lyrics to the song "Buzzing in the Garden" which are available at  www.peterandellen.com  Have each student place 5 bee stickers across the top of the paper.  Also have them place a sticker on each of the 5 milk caps.  Ask them to place one milk cap bee on top of each of the bee stickers on the page (one to one correspondence.)  Have them glue a strip of border across the bottom of the paper to represent the garden.  As the song is sung your students will slide a bee into the garden.  By the way there are 12 strips of border inside each package so when you cut them up you will have enough pieces for 36 children to do this activity.      

                                             It's easy to incorporate a "buggy" theme into your literacy centers.  I used clip art from Animal Antics  to create this bug jar and the caterpillars in it.  You will find images for dragonflies, flies, grasshoppers, ants, butterflies, ladybugs, caterpillars, ants and more on the cd that is included with this book.  You will also find farm, zoo, woodland, jungle, polar, sea animals and pets on the cd, but those themes are for another day.  All of the images are available in color and in black and white.  A child plays with print by matching letter tiles to the letters that are on the grid.  If you would like to download the letter tile grid click here.  As your students become familiar with print and learn to identify letters of the alphabet they will enjoy playing  Butterfly Bingoand Ladybug Letters.

Backyard bugs are a great manipulative for your math center. Your students will love to sort, count, and pattern these colorful  grasshopper, ladybug, bumblebee, spider, caterpillar, and beetle counters.  You can use images from Animal Antics to create sorting circles and graphing mats to use with these manipulatives.

You can use strips of border to create path games for your students to play. In  the game pictured here the students will be taking the bee to the flower.  As the children toss a die and move along the path they will be counting, saying the names of numbers in meaningful context and using concrete objects (a pawn) and actions (moving the pawn along the path) to represent the quantity shown on the die.  This game was created by gluing a bee border onto a sheet of poster board. 

In this picture I used a flower border ,and bee stickers to create bee counting mats.  A child places one Unifix cube on each bee sticker (one to one correspondence) and then counts as he moves the "bees" to the flowers. 

For more resource ideas check out these books...The Best of Mailbox Themes, Bugs, Bugs Early Childhood Thematic Unit  and  Ladybugs Primary Thematic Unit