11.7.13 Insects

Today we worked with the insect theme again. We started off with having the kids get onto Discovery Kids. com. This is a great site because many of the games are based on learning technology and other areas they are already working on in school. There math games that deal with the rain forest and social study activities that deal with the rivers in the U.S as well as the populations around them. We had the kids take two quizzes on insects to begin with and then had them work on another project. They were a little unruly today for some reason and the class clown, Ryan who's in Kindergarten, was dancing to the librarian computer music. She was watching a tutorial on iPads.....it was pretty funny, but I couldn't laugh because we were trying to get them to calm down. It's a weird thing trying to be authoritative and not being able to joke with them when they are like that because I'm used to joking with the kids I babysit.

Anyway, we had them take two quizzes on insects. This might seem harsh but if they passed both quizzes they were able to go onto the funner activity on Discovery Kids. If they only passed one they were able to go the lesser fun of the two activities. Most of them did very well and ended up on the second activity which was a game called Puterbugs. The less exciting of the two activities was to go onto Insects.org and find their favorite bug. Because many of the computers weren't connected to the internet, they were grouped into pairs or threes and did well figuring out the quizzes and deciding on which game they wanted to play. Puterbugs, misleading because of the name, actually showed the kids how to used certain technologies such as webcams, i pads, and geo maps. It used bugs to direct them but wasn't actually about insects. Although it didn't follow our lesson it turned out to be a really great activity for them to work on. The kids that were on the first activity had an interesting time figuring out their favorite bug. I think there may have been too many choices for them but they were able to single out what ones they thought were cool. They drew them out as best they could and typed one thing about their insect.

Overall I think it was a successful day, even if it was a "happy accident" kind of lesson. It worked well because the kids were able to work together on a computer and figure out the problem. We still need to be more put together but next week is Dinosaurs and I think it will go better than today did.