Newsletter

4/2/24

Greetings Preschool families! We have been having a lot of fun exploring our bug study. Throughout the week during morning meeting we have been reading "Bugs Are Insects" by Anne Rockwell. This book is listed for audiences aged 4-8 years, so it is packed with information, and can potentially be a dense and challenging read for our friends. However by breaking up the book and only focusing on a few pages a day our kiddos have been able to learn a lot about insects and different creatures! "Bugs Are Insects" taught us that insects have their skeletons outside their body, called external (or exo-) skeletons. They have 3 sections of their body, called the head, the thorax and the abdomen. We learned that insects have 6 legs, and if they have more than the creature is not an insect. Despite popular belief spiders are not insects, they are arachnids! This is because they have 8 legs.

To explore this, we used play dough to make insects, using sticks to add 6 legs. We painted pictures of creatures, labeling them as insects or arachnids depending on the number of legs our artists painted. We worked on counting and math concepts using leaves with different amounts of dots. Using gems as insects, we counted out the number of dots and added bugs to match. If a leaf had 6 dots, we added 6 bugs to the leaf.

On Monday we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went on a bug hunt! We broke up into groups and explored the graveyard, searching for insects and other creatures that emerged for Spring. We shared maIgnifying glasses so everyone could get a good look as they hunted. We searched in trees, bushes, the dirt and in the grass, spotting worms, flies, grubs and more. Today our friends had many questions about grasshoppers, so watched videos of how they "chirp" and eat. Did you know that to make their trademark "singing" sound by rubbing their legs against their abdomens? We also watched a video of a grasshopper eating a leaf and were mesmerized by their mouths!

You can go on a bug hunt too! No matter where you are, as long as you have outdoor access you can try to observe the insects found. Our friends are becoming experts in finding bugs!

Here are some of the videos we watched today:

April 19th: Spring Conferences (no school for students)
April 20th: Taste of Our Towns
May 3rd: Grandfriends Day (details forthcoming)
May 27th: School closed in observation of Memorial Day

We will be holding conferences next Friday and the following Monday. If you haven't signed up for a meeting but would like one, please check the Sign Up Genius or email the teachers.

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Questions to ask:

"How many legs does an insect have?"
"Is a spider an insect or an arachnid?"
"What body part do grasshoppers use to make sound?"
"Is an insect's skeleton on the outside or the inside?"
or
Try to rhyme the names of your family members together!