Learning About Insects! Fun For All!

Happy Spring everyone! Now that winter is over, we are looking forward to warmer weather, longer days, blooming flowers, and of course...insects! Teaching the children about insects is one of our favorite themes because it is a very high interest theme for them! We love to see them excited about learning and they are always highly engaged during each of the activities.

We like to start our unit by discussing what makes an insect an insect:

*insects have 6 legs

*insects have 3 body parts: head, thorax, abdomen

*insects have 2 antennae

*some insects have wings

*insects have a hard exoskeleton on the outside of their body

*insects hatch from eggs

To reinforce the understanding of an insects body parts, we like to make a yummy bug snack:

We used 3 marshmallows (head, thorax, abdomen), 6 pretzel sticks (legs), chocolate chips (compound eyes), and Doritos (wings). We did not put antennae on our insects, but you could easily use two more pretzel sticks or twizzlers! The children had so much making and eating this insect!

Time to eat! Yum!

We also purchased these awesome insects that are encased in acrylic so the children can get a good look at the insects and their body parts. They think these are so cool!

You can grab these fun models from Lakeshore Learning here.

We then discuss some of the different types of insects around the world and if these insects are helpful or harmful. Of course we only hit on a few of the over 900,000 different types of insects. Some of the insect pictures were quite funny to the children, they especially like the peanut head bug. It is interesting to hear a child's perspective of whether an insect is helpful or harmful. When asked if a bee is helpful or harmful, they immediately say harmful. All they think is "I've been stung by a bee and I didn't like it! Therefore, the bee is harmful." They are surprised to hear they are actually very helpful to us! Now, they look at bees in a whole new way! We made a fun bee hat that they wear happily!

During our unit, we like to take several days to concentrate on certain insects that children are very familiar with and already have some good background knowledge about. One of these insects is the butterfly! We start by learning about the life cycle of the butterfly:

Children also learn the body parts of a butterfly and completed a labeling activity:

These activities are a part of "A Butterfly Bundle" that can be found in our store. The pack also includes a variety of activities for reading, writing, and math skills.

Every year we order caterpillars from Insect Lore. After learning about the life cycle of a butterfly, the children are so intrigued to watch the changes happening to the caterpillars every day. 

You can check out these awesome kits here for your classroom or children at home. If you already have a butterfly garden, you can simply order a cup of caterpillars or maybe even order something different....perhaps ladybugs, praying mantises, or ants!

We love to make fun butterfly hats too! They turned out so cute and the children wore them around school the whole day making everyone smile! Some even wore them to recess and pretended to fly around the playground as the wings on the hat flapped in the air, ha!

You can find the pattern for this hat in our store for free! Click on the picture below:

We also had a blast pretending we were butterflies by drinking "nectar" (apple juice) from a flower using our "proboscis" (a straw).

No unit on butterflies is complete without reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar! After reading the book, children made an adorable caterpillar they used to retell the story with a friend.

Also inspired by The Very Hungry Caterpillar, we made necklaces!

There are so many fun and engaging things you can do during this theme! We feel like we could go on and on forever about all the fun we have! Come over and follow us at Kelly and Kim's Kindergarten Kreations to see more of the fun to come soon!

Thanks for hanging out with us this month! We will be back in May!

Do You Kahoot?

Happy December to you all! Can you believe 2014 is almost over?! 

It has been an exciting year of learning new things and we are happy 

 to be back blogging with our friends to tell you about something new we have learned about recently.

Kahoot is a fun and engaging classroom response system. It gives groups of students a voice and holds them accountable for answering...using technology, which they love! One of the great things about Kahoot is it works on all different types of devices...desktops, iPads, androids, PCs, smartphones, etc. (If you don't have many, consider asking parents for donations of older version iPhones or DonorsChoose donations!)

Oh, and best part...Kahoot is FREE!!!

After you sign up you have the ability to design your own multiple choice games for your students to play. You can also chose from the thousands of Kahoots that have already been created and shared by others. 

To create this super fun way to conduct pre-assessments, post-assessments, review games, and more, follow these steps:

1. Click "New K!" in the top left-hand corner to design a new Kahoot.

2. Select whether you want to create a quiz, discussion, or survey with your students (or staff!). We are going to continue create a survey, which is what we did for a math review with our students.

3. Give your survey a name.

4. Start to add questions about your learning content. We chose to also upload a visual for our students with each question since we were reviewing counting on ten frames and double ten frames for math.

5. You can alter the number of multiple choice answers you make available for children to choose from. You then identify which answer is correct and which are incorrect. 

6. After adding the number of questions to your liking, you save your survey and can reorder the questions if you need to. (There is also an option later when Kahoot with present your questions in random order each time also, which is helpful if you play the Kahoot multiple times with your students.)

7. Enter some information about your Kahoot if you'd like to make it searchable by other Kahoot users.

8. That's it! Time to play Kahoot with your students! Click "play now."

9. On this screen you can set preferences for the game, such as leaving up the game pin, randomizing questions, playing music while waiting, and so on.

When you are ready to play, you can project the game onto a Smart Board or any other large surface using a projector. This is the first screen that will be shown. The players will need the code to join the game. 

Children go to http://kahoot.it. (Tip: Add the webpage icon to iPad home screen in a similar way to making a bookmark. For Android devices, grab the Kahoot app in the Google Play Store here.)
Students will then be asked to enter the game pin given. This code is unique to that game at that time. 

Before they are granted access to the game, children must enter a team name. Children can play in groups or individually, that is up to you!

Looks like the Cheetahs are ready to play!

The questions are then displayed on the screen for children to answer. There are four possible answers to the question and each answer is color coded. The first image below is a screen shot of one of the game's questions. The second image is the game projected onto a Smart Board.

The children look at the projected image to determine the correct answer. The image on the student devices does not look the same. They see only the colored rectangles that correspond to the answers on the screen. Our children only needed a few practice questions before they were able to figure out how to answer the questions. At first, some of them were confused that they only had shapes on their screen and not the numbers.

When the correct answer is chosen, this is the screen the children see:

After the time limit on the question has been reached, a screen displays on the Smart Board or screen that shows the correct answer and how many teams answered it correctly. 

This video clip shows the game in action in our classrooms:

At the end of the quiz, the children are given the opportunity to rate the quiz using stars 1-5.

They are also asked if they learned something and would they recommend this Kahoot game to others. 

We have found Kahoot to be engaging and motivating on so many levels. We have seen tremendous teamwork, good sportsmanship, and just all around excitement for learning and showing what they know. 

These pictures say it all!

Looks like fun, right?!? You can give our Ten Frame Flash 0-20 Kahoot a try here!

Thanks for hanging with us today! Please let us know how you like Kahoot and how you will use it in your classroom! We will see you in 2015!