Shew Fly Don't Bother Me!

Learning about bugs is always a fun thing for little kids...especially little boys. What's better then dirt, tools and eewy, wiggly bugs!

After searching Pinterest and my favorite blogs, I found the best activities, recipes and games that are perfect for kids ages 3 and under.

Let's begin with the book list. Some of the top books include: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!, Bugs Are Insects, A Firefly in a Fir Tree, Leo the Lightning Bug, Ten Little Caterpillars

 

 

 

Sensory Tub

The sensory tub included the following: plastic bugs, magnify glass, safari hats, rocks, sticks, bug nets & leaves.

 

 

 

 

Activities

 

1) Play with mud dough (mix baking soda, water & food coloring)  We also buried bugs in the mud dough. They dug them out with their hands or we got a squirt gun and sprayed water on the bugs to clean them off.

 

 

 



 

2) Go on a Bug Hunt! Use your binoculars, bug hats and nets to catch bugs in the yard

 

3) Play mosquito tag. Give each kid a few stickers to hold in their hands. On go, kids chase each other.  When you tag another person you have to stick the sticker on them. The sticker represents a mosquito bite. When we played it, I had the kids yell, "Mosquito!!" 

 

4) Glow in the Dark bug hunt. Go to Dollar Tree and get a bag of glow-in-the-dark bugs for $1. At night, I hid the bugs in our bedroom and bathroom. Shaye went "looking" for all the bugs in the dark. He thought it was so cool to hunt for bugs inside!

 

5) Read the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Then use the cut outs to have them sequence the food while you read the book.

 

 



 

6) Bug Movement Cards. Do movements according to the cards. For example, Dance like a Bee, Spin like a Spider, Roll like a Roly Poly, etc.

 

 

 

7) Animal Sort Activities. You can sort by size, color or attributes. One we did was sorting by bugs that had wings vs. no wings.

 

 



 



Gardening 101

This week we have focused our time on Gardening! Each day we read a different book and either did a craft or made a special snack that goes along with gardening! At first I wasn't sure about this theme, but the more research I did I kept finding cute things to do! I also got lots of my ideas from the Virtual Book Club for Kids that we are participating in online.
 
Below is what we have done throughout the week!

To begin, I created a sensory tub for the boys to play with all week. I got two $1 bags of shredded brown paper to use as dirt, a set of fake flowers and kid gardening supplies.

 

 

 



Day 1:
Introduce the Gardening theme by doing nothing other then...GARDENING! We went down to my brothers and planted vegetables in the garden. Of course we put these boys to work!! We talked about garden tools (tractors, shovels, cages, etc.), what plants we planted, of course we just played in the dirt!

 

 

 

Day 2:

We read the books A is for Salad by Mike Lester & Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert. Since it's so beautiful outside today I didn't want to do very much inside. We made a Rainbow Salad out of fruit and took it outside to eat! Red=Strawberries, Orange=mandarin oranges, Yellow=Banana, Green=grapes, Blue=blueberries, Violet=grapes

 

 

 

Day 3:

We read the book How Groundhog's Garden Grew by Lynne Cherry.  I had the boys draw pictures of a garden. I also created a color page that listed vegetables/fruits and their color!

 

 

 Day 4:

We read the book Biscuit in the Garden by Alyssa Capucilli

Then we played with our sensory tub!

 

 



 

Day 5:

We read the book Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert

As a special treat we had pudding (as dirt) and gummy worms.

 



 

 

Other Great Gardening Books:

Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown