At least they're not lice...

I meant to post some of these last week.   We started our lifecycles unit with insects. My kid are seriously obsessed.   We have bugs everywhere in little jars and houses.   I am spending the majority of this week in PBL training,  so I am a little scared to see what is sharing our space when I return on Thursday.   As long as we don't have lice,   I guess I will be okay with it.  

I bought some ladybug larva. Of all the bugs I know, I like them best. They don't bite or sting,  and aren't especially creepy.   They don't stink or spray anything...major pluses in my book. I love how different they look as larva than adults. They are a great example of a complex lifecycle if your kids have already done the butterfly thing,  as mine have.  

We have had a quite a few days of no specials (no planning -gahhhr!),  so we planned two straight days of ladybug fun!   We worked with our bilingual pals and completed almost everything in my Ladybug Love packet. We were able to take a bunch of grades (science, ELA and math) for the end of the year. Serious bonus!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Ladybug-Love-Science-Math-and-ELA-Activities-682166

One part of the unit is researching their own insect.   They had so much fun.   They were so engaged and just kept going with it.   In fact,  on Friday I gave them some "fun Friday" time. I was fried,  so they could have pretty much taken advantage of the situation... I have Legos and computers and games with very loose education value... and they seriously made insects and insect projects.   EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.   Little weirdos!   I love them!

We all tried on my bee vision glasses.

And in an incredible stroke of ....luck?  I found this big bit of nastiness in my front yard.   The entire disgusting  interesting thing is here - from the eye scales to the tail... so we had a non insect example of molting to go along with the "ladybug poop" which is really our larva molts!   Springtime fun!

One of my friends posted that you can tell if the snake it venomous by looking at the tail.   Can you tell if this one is?