Spring has sprung

This is the lady bug home with a few larvae crawling around.

Spring has definitely sprung in my room. We finished up our plant unit this week on Monday by planting our seeds. I used Abby's Mystery box activity to add some mystery to the seed planting project. I wish I had taken a picture of my box. It's super cute. I used the box my Blogging Exchange Friend, Amy, sent me during the valentine's day exchange. It was perfect. I'll have to take a picture this week. I'm using it again on Monday to introduce my kids to our new friends, the ladybugs. This week we started our unit on insects. Our reading series had us read a book about Beetles and then we read The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. I had other books I wanted to read but we just didn't seem to get to them. So I decided to extend insects into another week. This week is our last week before Spring break so I thought it would be ok to take a break from our usual reading series. I figured it out and we finish up our reading series by the first of May so an extra week won't be a big deal. I ordered the ladybug larvae from Insectlore and it came on Friday. I was expecting eggs but instead go a few baby ladybugs. I really hope they haven't transform med into the ladybugs over the weekend. I haven't introduced them to the kids yet.
We made some ladybugs and incorporated a little math into it. They had to make an addition sentence out of the number of dots they put on the bug. I've been so inspired by several blogs to incorporate more art into my day. But I'm a firm believer that it needs to be student created. I don't do patterns but have the students follow directions to create things. This is my way of incorporating some common core into the art projects. The listening standards apply well here. I also don't have a lot of copies to use on creating patterns for the students.

This coming week I plan to do a little more with The Grouchy Ladybug and hopefully a nonfiction book about ladybugs. I guess I need to hope they have one in the library. We're also going to read The Hungry Caterpillar and The Lonely Firefly. I also have some fun Easter activities planned with the plastic Easter eggs from the dollar tree. I hoped to have made the activities and post them today. But those freebies will have to come later. I do want to tell you about my newest item in Teacher's Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers. It's Buggy for Words. Included in this packet are a game with Fry's phrases on it, some letter cards for word building and a some word cards for sentence building. They all have a bug themed. I made something similar for Valentine's day and used it with my kids I tutor. This time around I included a star e for a little magic e work for some of my higher kids. I busted the letter cards out last week and you would have thought it was something so cool just because I changed the clipart. Here are a couple of pictures of what is included and the item in action:

If you are interested in purchasing these items, click here for Teacher's Notebook and here for Teachers Pay Teachers. ** Update ** I added a free preview you can download of one of the games. So check it out!
I would love to get some feedback on my items. So the first 3 people to check out one of my stores and leave a comment with one of my items you would like, I'll send it to you for free. But you are committing to giving me some feedback on my items. I probably won't get anything out to you until tomorrow morning. How has spring sprung in your room?