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ami*
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I need ideas to finish off the mini-units for
The Honeybee and the Robber
and
The Very Lonely Firefly
in order to have the great big Eric Carle Insect Unit complete.
Does anyone have anything? Any go-along books? Activity ideas? Recipes? Websites? Lessons?
Thanks!  I'm hoping to call it a wrap on the Eric Carle unit by the end of next week.
Ami 
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MaryM
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Hi Ami,
We had a bee unit study discussion early on in the forum. I had posted my honey and bee activities/resources and such on that thread. There were lots of great activities and tie-ins shared by others.
Check out the bee/honey unit thread
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Mary M. in Denver
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saintanneshs
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Great go-along books for The Very Lonely Firefly...
Fireflies! by Julie Brinckloe
Ten Flashing Fireflies by Philemon Sturges (a counting book!)
I haven't come up with any ideas yet for our firefly study (planning to do that somewhere between snakes, teddy bears, our camping and beach trips)...I'll share them then if someone doesn't post here with a few handy ones I can borrow! 
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Kristine
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MaryM
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Fireflies
Not my expertise area as we live in the west, an area with no fireflies  I loved going to visit my cousins in Wisconsin because there were fireflies. I loved catching them and making laterns at night - great activity if fireflies are in your area. I'm sure everyone who grew up around fireflies remembers doing that. Hey, for those of you in firefly country - are there fewer fireflies now? I know when we go back to Wisconsin now it seems like there are so few fireflies. You can still see some but not the large numbers I remember from 30 years ago.
Informative firefly website where I just learned we do have fireflies west of Kansas - it's just that they aren't the luminescent species
Fireflies in the Night - interesting firefly facts within a story.
Math/counting 1-10
Ten Flashing Fireflies
Other add-on books
When Lightning Comes in a Jar
The Night of the Fireflies
Study the process of chemiluminescence
explanation/experiment
Light stick experiment
similar experiment
Bioluminescence website - with cool pictures of luminescent animals, very informative
Chemiluminescence website- science behind chemiluminescence
Creatures That Glow Book with illustrations that glow in the dark to give an idea of what the creatures look like in the dark.
There is also another book with this title by Melvin Berger. It has a glow in the dark poster that pulls out.
Bibliography of other children's resources on chemiluminescence
Just plain fun
Firefly toothbrush
firefly lights
glow sticks, necklaces, bracelets, etc. from party stores, amusement parks/fairs (and tons of places on the web)
Firefly craft
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Mary M. in Denver
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momwise
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Cute! I left a couple in my cart. I'm thinking down the road maybe of pairing this with a firefly book for gifts. What else would go well? Is it kind of mean to give a Colorado kid a book about fireflies?
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Gwen...wife for 30 years, mom of 7, grandma of 3.....
"If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life." JPII
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MaryM
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momwise wrote:
| Is it kind of mean to give a Colorado kid a book about fireflies? |
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Maybe these would be a way we could have fireflies here in Colorado - firefly lights. They look cute although a bit spendy.
Oh, and I have edited and added to my earlier message above (had to post it too quickly last night and it wasn't complete or spell corrected!)
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ami*
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THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!
I have added TONS of the ideas! Thanks also for posting the link to the bee archive!
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momwise
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We DO have firelies in Colorado!! Find out where the firelies have been seen in your state!
I found this link in the paper this morning. The article also says there are many firelies that do not emit light at night.
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Gwen...wife for 30 years, mom of 7, grandma of 3.....
"If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life." JPII
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JennGM
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MaryM wrote:
| Not my expertise area as we live in the west, an area with no fireflies |
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This is new information to me! Why aren't there fireflies in the West...or at least kinds that don't light up?
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Jennifer G. Miller
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JennGM
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momwise wrote:
We DO have firelies in Colorado!! Find out where the firelies have been seen in your state!
I found this link in the paper this morning. The article also says there are many firelies that do not emit light at night. |
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Thanks for the link! I see them all the time in my area and we're not listed...so I'll have to make a report!
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Jennifer G. Miller
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Family in Feast and Feria
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MaryM
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I would imagine that Virginia doesn't have many sightings listed on that sight because frankly it is common place to have them in that area and people would not likely be looking for a place to post a rare occurance. I am a bit skeptical of the western sightings - I do think it can happen to have some individual transplants/hitchhikers or something but they do not regularly live in this geographic area. It clearly is not conducive to reproduction and a flourishing population. A couple of the sites I had mentioned above do talk about the large variety of non-luminescent beetles in the same family which are present in the west, but then technically I don't think we can really call them "fireflies." Experts aren't sure why we don't really have ones that light up in the west. So while there may be some rare sightings of a firefly or two on the plains side of the state I still am sad we don't have the firefly experience of the east and midwest.
No one really answered about whether they are seeing fewer in their area or not over the last several decades. It was interesting to read the book The Night of the Fireflies ( Karen Winnick) about a firefly celebration in Japan. The author's note says "Fireflies once filled the skies on summer evenings in Japan. But over time, many of the fireflies disappeared. Now they are raised and saved for one summer night each year, when they are set free for the children." Wonder if we could get some to raise???? 
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momwise
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MaryM wrote:
| Experts aren't sure why we don't really have ones that light up in the west. So while there may be some rare sightings of a firefly or two on the plains side of the state I still am sad we don't have the firefly experience of the east and midwest. |
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Here's the article.
The guy in Boulder says he sees them every summer now for 3 weeks or so. He theorizes that people aren't using as many pesticides these days, although I don't know about that. He sees them in open space so I don't think those areas would have been previously covered with pesticides. Besides, weren't they using pesticides in areas that 20 or 30 years ago had more fireflies?
The article also says wetter weather produces more fireflies, so maybe it is the lack of humidity and rain that explains not having any in the West. They feed on slugs and snails. I'd love to try to "grow" some!
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"If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life." JPII
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Katie
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Ami,
I know I am a whole year late, but I have been using the Eric Carle unit study and had a few things that to add. I can't find the original thread here. We are really enjoying it.
Macbeth posted this Beautiful Beetles website. All the photos are copyrighted, but they are wonderful to look at, and there are several speicies of Click Beetles.
Here is a large color-by-numbers book to printfull of insects. I have some kids who would love this, and some who would consider this torture, but if you have a prolific colorer you could use some of these.
Here is The Garden Safari with lots of beetle pics and info.
Learning Page has insect fact sheets and also insect themed math, language and science sheets for the early elementary and preschool crowd. These are great for my 4yo who loves to "do school" with us, but has the patience of a flea. My 6yo has taken a break from Miquon to do buggy math sheets. I also use the clip art from here for lapbooks sometimes. You have to register but it is free.
Thanks again for all the hard work putting this together for us. Now that summer is here we are really enjoying this. We are compiling notebook-style pages, and when we're done I'm going to get it bound into one big insect book. The girls are so excited.
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Katie
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Me again. We're about to embark on "The Grouchy Ladybug" and I have some additional resources we hope to enjoy. Many of them I found by searching for ladybird, which is what we call the little critters in Britain.
Wikipedia's ladybug page
Ladybug games and resources here, including photos of various ladybug species found in the UK.
Nice ladybug info and pictures here.
A nice printable telling time book from Learning Page. You need to register for this site though it's free.
Here's my really exciting find though. It turns out the humble ladybug is named after Our Lady, the Virgin Mary. I had no idea! What a wonderful little rabbit trail for this book. Here is an article called Our Lady's Bug which tells a little more about the names for the ladybird around the worls and their links to Mary.
And here's another fun page full of Ladybug lore and poems.
Finally, I love the pictures in this printable little insect book from Learning Page. Mini Insect Book. The pictures are lovely old-fashioned plates. Very nice.
This has been so much fun. I really just wanted to expose my little girls to the insect world in a fun way, and open their eyes in time for summer to all the wonderful nature around them, but this unit has been so much more. They have learned a lot (me too!), and I cannot say how happy and grateful I am!
Enjoy!
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Meredith
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Katie, thank you for all the wonderful ladybird/bug links!! Our local nursery has ladybugs for 25% off right now and I have a new (rental) garden full of roses with aphids so I think a ladybug trail would suit us just fine right now The insect world is so full of fascination for all ages especially the little ones!!
Ironically, my ds 4 just picked out a wonderful beetle book at the library and it's super! Check my blog here for a little bit about our "buggy day" Thanks again!
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lapazfarm
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Katie wrote:
Finally, I love the pictures in this printable little insect book from Learning Page. Mini Insect Book. The pictures are lovely old-fashioned plates. Very nice.
Enjoy! |
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I just wanted to point out a neat connection, if you are following Lissa's posts at the Lilting House, that this little mini-book happens to include a picture of an ichneumonid wasp, parasitizing a caterpillar. It says that they are beneficial to gardeners because they kill caterpillars. I'm not so sure Homer would agree!
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Dawn
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I just checked in with this thread, and thought I'd mention... if you have the current Ranger Rick magazine, there is an interesting article on fireflies. The website has some ideas too.
We've been taking pictures of fireflies without even knowing what they were! 
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Lissa
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lapazfarm wrote:
I just wanted to point out a neat connection, if you are following Lissa's posts at the Lilting House, that this little mini-book happens to include a picture of an ichneumonid wasp, parasitizing a caterpillar. It says that they are beneficial to gardeners because they kill caterpillars. I'm not so sure Homer would agree! |
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Thanks, Theresa! Here's the link. Ick ick ick.
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Katie
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We've been studying crickets this week, as well as grasshoppers by association. I learned how to tell the difference between the two. Amazing what you find out teaching a kindergartener!
In addition to the links on Ami's website, here are a few more:
First is a nice cricket coloring page. I used to be very anti-colring pages, but a nice one like this gives my girls a chance to acquaint themselves with some details in an easy way, and I often find them drawing their nicely detailed pictures after the fact.
For you hands-on Moms, here is a cricket mask to print and make. When I get some more colour ink I'll do this and watch those critters bounce off the walls!
This is an entire cricket classroom unit. I used it mainly for info and a couple of diagrams.
This is a National Geographic Kids' article about how crickets tune out their own songs so they don't go deaf!
Lots of cricket info and photos here.
We used the lifecycle drawings at the bottom of the page for our notebooks and for discusion about what was different to butterfllies and beetles.
Beautiful illustrations of all stages of a cricket here.
Something fun to promote some thoughtful discussion about diversity here.
This one is fun! You can buy a blank book and make your very own Very Quiet Cricket book. I think Amazon might carry this, too.
Information on grasshopper and locust plagues and crop damage.
Really really nice Orthoptera information and pictures for the elementary crowd here.
The Georgia Conservancy's info page has nice clear information. You could use the definition sof grasshoppers. crickets and katydids to make a big venn diagram.
Info on crickets and grasshoppers as
dinner.
And if that didn't make you hungry, maybe some edible crickets from here will. They have cricket-licket suckers with a real cricket inside. Yum! Also check out their nice bug posters. You'll need to scroll way down for those delicious suckers.
An interesting cricket poem by Vachel Lindsay is located here. I've enclosed the link instead of just the text, because the whole plate is neat to look at. Scroll down a ways to find it.
Finally, we'll be tying in the Egyptian plagues as our Bible story.
At the playground in the woods the other day we heard lots of grasshoppers making LOTS of noise. It was so fun to hear it after the kids had learned so much about them. Have fun!
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momwise
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Oooooo Katie......very nice!!  Makes me want to start a cricket adventure.
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Gwen...wife for 30 years, mom of 7, grandma of 3.....
"If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life." JPII
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Topic: The Very Quiet Cricket
