i is for insects (year 3, week 29)

- May 13, 2017

i is for insects homeschool unit from In Our Pond

We took a vote and the insect that the kids wanted to focus on this week was bees! I love bees and they inspire me to do lots of free printables. All week, I've been posting new themed ones. You can find them here:

Monday- Teen Numbers Board
Tuesday- Travel Time Tuesday
Wednesday- Life Cycle Cards
Thursday- Hive Moveable Alphabet
Friday- Counting and Addition Cards

Monday
It was beautiful today, so we went to the park. It was our first visit of the year, and it was fun to watch how they've grown over the summer. Skimmer (age 4.5) climbed all the way to the top of the play structure without help. Then, he got himself back down without getting hurt, an even greater feat. He also did about half of the monkey bars (with a spotter).

Tadpole did very well at the playground as well. He kept wanting to be barefoot and coming to me to get his shoes off. Then, he'd play awhile before returning for his shoes. I think we'll get a lot braver and more independent over this year.

Dragonfly seemed to look at the playground in a new way. She loves to swing from her hands, so she spent a lot of time running around and swinging from different things. She wants to go back to the playground every day.

Tuesday
We read about honeybees today and learned about pollination. We used bananas to pretend to be bees, dipping them in honey to simulate the sticky hairs bees have on their bodies. Then, we stuck our banana-bees into different toppings, going from "flower to flower" and pretending to collect pollen. After everyone had had a turn, we noticed that the bowls of toppings had gotten mixed. We talked about how the bees drop a little bit of pollen as they go from flower to flower and pollinate them. When we were all done with our snack, the table was covered in toppings, which we said was like the pollen that bees drop as they fly back to their hive.

Wednesday
AWANA day! It was our last one of the year!

Thursday
We read another bee book and did our bee counters (printable at the top of this post). We used buttons as counters. I was impressed how quickly Dragonfly did her math facts. She's come a long way this year.

$i is for insects homeschool unit from In Our Pond$

The kids played outside a lot this week. I love this picture of the kids that my husband took. This is an old mole hole that the kids have turned into a digging pit slash bug investigation area. It's one of their favorite places to play.