Bug Fun Friday

Our school has Fun Fridays in the 1st grade.  We are only allowed to have 3 official parties each year (Christmas, Valentines, & End of the Year), so any other celebrations have to be a Fun Friday with a healthy snack.  I emailed our class parents and asked people to sign up to plan and do a Fun Friday.  A Fun Friday is only 30 minutes and can involve a craft, game, reading books, and healthy snack.  We are having Fun Fridays for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Dr Seuss' birthday, St Patrick's Day, and Spring/Easter.  We also have other theme Fridays, including bugs and winter.

I did the bug Fun Friday and it was so fun!  First, we made a snail craft.  I took paper plates and drew spirals on them with a black marker.  Then, I found a snail coloring page to make a template for the body.  I traced the template onto green construction paper and cut them out.  I stapled the snail body to the paper plates.  Next, I cut colored tissue paper into small squares and put the squares into individual Ziploc bags for each student.  Since we didn't have a lot of time, I had to have everything ready to go!  The kids glued on googly eyes to the body and tissue paper to the shell.  It turned out so cute!

Second, we played a quick game to get the wiggles out.  We did: slide like a snail, flutter like a lady bug, jump like a cricket, blink like a lightning bug, wiggle like a caterpillar, roll like a roly poly, click like a beetle, march like an ant, fly like a butterfly, dance like a bee, and spin like a spider.  These all came from Oopsey Daisy's I is for Insect Mommy School.  You can get this lesson and print out the action cards here: Oopsey Daisy Mommy School

Third, the kids ate their snack while I read books.  The "healthy" snack was dirt cups, which is sugar-free chocolate pudding in cups with crushed Oreos (=dirt) and gummy worms on top.  I read I Spy Fly Guy, The Very Quiet Cricket, and Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy.

I printed a couple of fun activities for the kids to take home.  I got an insect maze and word search from Busy Bee Crafts and a create your own insect page from Have Fun Teaching.  I rolled the pages up and tied them with red tulle with a fake bug attached.  Easy and cheap.

The kids and I had a great time!