Spring brings lots of fun activities for young children! Although I am not a fan of bugs in my home, I do love a good bug theme in the classroom.
Whether if you are a preschool teacher or a teacher of 1st grade even 2nd grade, I hope you find a few fun insect activities to add to your bug lesson plans.
Bug Read Aloud Lesson Ideas
Insect Detective by Stele Voake is a fantastic picture book that is a book that is in the Read and Wonder Series. I love this book because it includes a narrative text and informational texts.
Insect Detective Book Summary
The Insect Detective is a book about a young boy whose heart belongs to the world of bugs. He sets out on grand adventures outdoors, on a quest to discover them. As he travels, he shares all sorts of cool tidbits about bugs, like where they live, what they munch on, and how they keep safe. As you can see, the illustrations are wonderful.
Insect Detective Interactive Read Aloud
In kindergarten classrooms, an interactive read-aloud is a structured activity where the teacher reads a book aloud to the students, focusing on decoding the text, while the students concentrate on understanding the story. The teacher navigates through the words and sentences, ensuring that the reading is clear and accessible, while the students are encouraged to engage with the content, pondering over the story’s events, characters, and messages.
This approach is vital because it separates the complex task of reading into manageable parts. It allows children to develop their comprehension skills without the added challenge of decoding, laying a solid foundation for their future reading and critical thinking abilities.
NOTE: I must have a propensity for making odd faces when I teach because EVERY. SINGLE. PHOTO has me with an odd expression. EVERY! ONE!
#1 Insect Schema Building
Checking in with our schema means tapping into what we already know about a topic before reading. This strategy helps us connect new information to our existing knowledge, making it easier to understand and remember. It’s like preparing a cozy room in our mind for new guests!
We worked on what we already knew about bugs and more specifically what we knew about insects.
These teaching slides are so helpful in guiding the peer-to-peer conversations in the classroom.
Students also respond on what they know and learned about bugs and insects.
#2 Inferring about Insect Helpers
Inferring is like being a detective. It means reading between the lines to understand what’s not directly stated. This strategy is crucial because it helps students think critically and deeply about the story, encouraging them to use clues from the text and their own experiences to build understanding.
Once again, the teaching slides help focus the lesson around student talk and building meaning together.
Students then took what they learned and wrote about insects.
#4 Insect Detective Video
This is a great video for Insect Detective!
# 5 and #6 Bug Craft and Sentence Study
Each of our Engaging Readers Reading Comprehension units includes a sentence study. We converted these to teaching slides as well!
Depending on the level of grammar study you are doing with your class, you can move the color boxes to code the sentence.
Then this directed drawing is a great activity to follow up with. Students can add their sentence to the craft.
All of these detailed lessons and response pages can be found in our reading comprehension lesson plans:
#7 More Insect Science Fun!
In other texts, we learned about insects compound eyes. I have had these kaleidoscope viewers forever, but you can find something similar by clicking HERE.
We enjoyed this fun activity from Deanna Jump’s Insect Unit .
#8 Bug Snacks!
#9 Labeling the Parts of an Insect
After students hands were nice and stick, the students labeled their bug masterpiece!
These are older photos, but you can still find the same fun activities in Deanna Jump’s Insect unit.
#10 Bug Poem
We love a good thematic poem! We sing along with my original poem to the tune of: Five Green and Speckled Frogs!
This bug poem goes into their poetry notebook!
#11 Insect Decodable Text
This decodable book is about the life cycle of a butterfly!
This is an interactive text, so students match the pictures to the words in the book. They love feeling successful when they can apply the phonics rules they have learned in an authentic way!
You can read another blog post about butterflies by clicking:
#12 Inferring with Bee Riddles
My class loved the daily inferring riddles. This is a quick activity each morning. I would read the riddle out loud, then students would write their guesses down on a slip of paper. We would review the clues from the riddle and reveal the answer!
You can read more about Inferring with the Riddle of the Day in this blog post:
#13 Insects and Bug Handwriting Practice
This is another way to start the morning with some handwriting practice to go with your bug unit theme?
You can find these by clicking:
#14 Bug Flashcards and Fluency Practice
These little flashcards are a great way for students to practice reading high frequency words and word phrases. Remember, we want to teach these high frequency words first, then ask students practice them until those high frequency words turn into sight words.
#15 Bug Spelling Game
One of the biggest shifts in my thinking with the science of reading is the idea of mastery. I used to think that if students could read the words, they had mastered them. However, research states that mastery happens when students can internalize the spelling of the words.
This little spelling game is a perfect way to assist students in building spelling mastery!
#16 Bug Math Center Activities
Here are some great math centers that are bug themed!
#17 Bug and Insect Digital Center Activities
One of the things I love about digital activities are the zero prep portion of them. No copies, no lamination, just do!
Bug Lesson Plan Template
You can download this free template and edit it to make it your own! On the PDF version, each resource is linked so you can find it quickly.
Do you want to see more lesson plans like this?
Hopefully, you found a few hands-on activities and lesson ideas you can try for your insect week. As I said, this sweet book is a great story that I’m sure your students will love.
10 Responses
Hi Deedee! I have been using you & Deanna Jump’s Writing Through the Year Unit for years (and LOVE it!), but have just discovered your blog. Don’t know what took me so long! 🙂 Anyway, I noticed that for some of your blog posts on units of study (like teeth) you have a schedule of your week. I love this because I can see how you fit everything in. Do you have one for this insect unit? (Or did I miss it?) I always get restless about this time of year and want to change my classroom flow, plus I have nonfiction writing coming up next month and this would be a wonderful kick off. Thank you! – Amy Kovacs
P.S. I bought one of your TPT Math & Literacy Center packs and am so excited to use it next month!!! Thanks for answering my questions so quickly on TPT.
AHH! I am so glad you found me!!
Yes! Here is the one for Insect Detective!
Insect Detective
I love your pictures, ideas and lessons. This year, Im the Pre-K – 2 science teacher, and I am looking for lesson plans with differentiation, printables, hands-on activities covering the NYC Science Curriculum. Would you be able to help me, it would be appreciated.
Hi there!
I think you might like the science lessons that Cara Carroll has created. You will find her on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Wow what a fabulous website! Your ideas are amazing! We are going to be Insect “Investigators”
Thank you so much!!!
Thank you so much!
What would you typically do on Day 1 using this book?
We work on the schema chart. What do we already know, what did we learn. 🙂
Hi! I love your ideas, thank you for sharing all that you do! I follow you on TPT but can’t seem to find anything related to this unit. Would you mind sending me a direct link? I also can’t seem to find that book suggestion at the library…worth purchasing?
The lesson plans and activities are available in Deanna Jump’s TPT store. Here is that link for you: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/READ-ALOUD-LESSON-PLANS-April-Set-Two-2452643
For the book, you can probably find a read aloud on YouTube. I always prefer to have the book and do like this one but that is absolutely up to you! It looks like it’s $8 on Amazon – so not too bad!