This year, our expedition for kindergarten is Bugs and Insects. We have three investigations: We will start off with ladybugs in the fall, ants in winter and butterflies in the spring. I will try to keep the website updated with our classroom happenings in terms of our expedition.

Our current “Guiding Question” is: What do insects do for us? All of the children are familiar with this and we try to think about this as we study insects and engage in our investigations. I will change the guiding question a few times through our expedition. The other guiding questions I have are: Do insects help us? How do insects survive?

Our Ladybug Expedition Learning Targets for the students to achieve are:

• I can describe the characteristics of an insect.
• I can name the parts of a ladybug.
• I can describe the lifecycle of a ladybug.
• I can describe the habitat of a ladybug.
• I can describe the food chain of a ladybug.

As we learn these targets we will move on to the next, but continue to re-visit them throughout the year. We also learned a fun song to help us remember the characteristics of an insect!  

We currently have live ladybugs in our classroom that came to us in the larval stage. We are lucky enough to watch them grow into adult lady bugs. The children are keeping observation journals and are given opportunities to observe the ladybugs and their progress in their lifecycle several times a day.

Insects are also integrated into all our other subjects: reading, writing, math and art.

Here are a few pictures of the ladybugs in their journey through their life cycle.