Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!

One of the things I worked hard to fully implement the last month of school was a study, or project, approach to my curriculum. I took a class with a national trainer in April and was immediate inspired to make this approach a part of my classroom. The coolest thing about it is that the children determine everything. They really have a chance to take some ownership of their learning, which makes it much more meaningful to them.

We studied bugs for the last month of school. The students spent one week exploring. We went on nature walks to find bugs, spent time touching, watching, and documenting our findings about worms, and observed bees (which were safely kept in baby food jars) and boxelder bugs. It was amazing watching and listening to them as they explored; they came up with so many cool ideas and excellent questions.

Next we created a KWL chart. The students came up with questions they would like to investigate about bugs and discussed what they already know. From this chart, I picked questions for us to investigate - questions like, "what do worms eat?" and "what is the difference between spiders and bugs?"

Then we spent two weeks doing these investigations. We did experiments with different foods to see what our classroom worms ate. We watched short clips from the internet that helped us learn about how bees make honey. We charted similarities/differences we noted between spiders and bugs. We measured worms. We read about bugs and wrote about bugs. It was the most fun I had had all year.

At the end of our study, we celebrated everything we learned about bugs by writing a classroom book about bugs. The students had so many things to add to our book and loved illustrating their pages.

Having come into preschool with no experience with preschool, I feel like I have finally found my groove! I'm so looking forward to continuing this next year!