Bye, Bye Bugs... He-llo King Arthur

Because the new school year is fast approaching, we're reeling through our units gently and quickly.

For Bug's Land, we had a bunch of bug-filled fun. Here are some books/projects we enjoyed:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Afterward we made some caterpillar/butterfly crafts.

The predominantly blue number on the right was made with hand- and footprints with a 3-part butterfly body in the middle. The best part for Aidyn was getting his hands and feet painted in Smurf like fashion and rinsing them off in the kitchen sink. I also painted my own hands and feet and made a butterfly, but photos were not allowed!

I found a cute color-by-word butterfly picture and a caterpillar-symmetry worksheet.

We went on to read the adorable story of a The Very Clumsy Click Beetle (also written by Eric Carle).

After reading it, I made a teeny tiny drawing of a click beetle and taped it to a refrigerator clip (a clothespin would have worked better). We took turns "clicking" the beetle and watching it either land on its feet or its back.

To meet some bugs in person, we trekked to UC Davis's Museum of Entomology. 

For my little hands-on learner, I made some interactive worksheets to work on bug and word identification AND -ug words.

It was wonderful how many times our cat, Megus, splayed her big ol' body across the paper and Aidyn just had to re-do it. Oh, thank you, Meggie!

I made this worksheet of -ug words and supplied letter tiles for Aidyn to fit over the printed words.

We haven't gone through this yet, but yesterday I made Aidyn an in-the-garden sensory bin:

It's filled with potting soil, rocks, sticks, Aidyn's little plastic animals (frogs, a bee, ladybug, snake, etc.), a golf ball, and an egg (with a conifer seed in it). He has a magnifying glass and some scoopers for exploring this today.

But now we're overlapping to our next land: Fantasyland!

We'll be reading Arthurian legends, fairy tales, and stories of knights and castles. We'll cuddle up and watch Sword in the Stone and many other classic Disney films.

Other non-unit related activities we've been up to:

-Took a field trip to the Jelly Belly Factory
-Took Aidyn for his first experience bowling!

Yes, he wore a cape for bowling. He was like the Valiant Knight of Bowling.

-We've been reading R.L. Stine's Welcome to Camp Nightmare like there is no tomorrow.

cliffhanger chapter ending
Aidyn: Read! Read! What happens?!
Mama: Let me get something to drink first. My voice is going out.

-Aidyn's been learning to ride his bike without training wheels.

-I wish I had pictures, but yesterday Aidyn got the muddiest/dirtiest/grossest I've ever seen him. He literally rolled in mud outside with his friends (I'm sure the friends just watched his silliness). Disclaimer: getting this dirty is ok in our house. The rule is you can make all the mess you want so long as you completely clean up after yourself.

-We've been teaching Aidyn to swim, both with his swim vest and without.


I love summer.