Unplug Your Kids: Insects

This week's Unplugged theme is insects. We decided to focus on three different insects (ant, bee, and ladybug).

Arin loves her spelling game that we made a few weeks ago, so for our first insect project, we made more spelling games. First, I printed pictures of an ant, a bee, and a lady bug. I wanted Arin to color these, but she wasn't as enthused about this as I had hoped, so I had to help her color the pictures. Next, I traced her bathtub foam letters to make each word. Then, I laminated the game sheet. After all three game sheets were laminated, we were able to play the game. I laid out all of the foam letters and Arin would find the correct one and match it to the traced letter. She really likes this game, so it kept her attention for quite a while.

Next, we did a bee project. Using this recipe, we made pudding bumble bees. Ours didn't turn out so well. The pudding and cookie crumbs are layered to make the bee's stripes, but other than that, it looks more like a mouse than a bee. Perhaps this is because we are missing the antennae and stinger (I couldn't find blacck shoe string licorice, so we just opted to leave those off).

For the ladybug project, I had Arin paint one piece of cardstock red and a second piece of cardstock black. I had to help her with this also because she wasn't interested in painting the entire sheet of paper. Once the paint was dry, I made a ladybug, leaving off the spots. I laminated that. Then I cut out 10 circles from the black painted cardstock and laminated those also. I made cards and numbered them 1-10 and laminated each of those. I also put magnets on the back of the ladybug and the back of each circle. I put the numbered cards face down. Arin would turn a card over, say what number was on the card and then put that many circles on the ladybug. She actually had more fun playing this game without the number cards. She liked to just put the circles on the ladybug and counting them as she went.

Our last project was an ant project. I made a file folder game, which I call "Ant's Picnic" I didn't do any research to see if there are any real games with this title, so hopefully there aren't. I fashioned this game after "CandyLand" The board looks similiar with the colored squares and the cards are also colored squares. We used the same rules as "CandyLand". For the game pieces, I used water bottle caps with an ant sticker on top. This was the first board game Arin had ever played. The first time she had no idea what to do, but the second time we played it, she caught on quickly and loved it. Then she was upset when it was time to put it away because she just wanted to keep playing!