For the start of bug week Ava joined us for the day. Since Monday is usually our library day I decided to push that to Tuesday so we could get right on with the field trips. Today was all about water bugs. We packed up the wagon with a small picnic and I grabbed two nets from an Elefun game.
The girls acting their age :)
When we got to the pond I was totally blown away by what we saw. There were hundreds of small blue dragonflies all over the place. They were so beautiful and thankfully for me, easy to catch, so I caught a couple for Olivia and Ava so they could get a close look.
It was really funny to see them start off very slowly and carefully trying to catch a dragonfly. After about ten minutes they realized it was getting then no where and so when they saw a dragonfly land on a plant, they would run over and practically beat the plant down trying to get the bug. In case you're wondering, that technique didn't work either.
I love this shot. "Mom, I think I got a dragonfly!" Olivia did end up catching two bugs before the day was over. She yells over to me, "Mom, I got one. I got a bug!" I run over and she releases two bees right in my face. No stings thankfully but from then on I had to be very clear about not catching bees.
We did an entire day for bees because bees are cool, except when they fly in my face. It just so happened that a bee garden opened up the week before. I love UCD. They have made preschool so easy and practically free. After visiting the garden, which was really cool, Olivia didn't want to do my bee craft so we went with what she wanted to do. We ate honey sticks and then later on baked a honey cake. Her ideas were better anyway.
Olivia visiting the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Art Projects for the Week
Olivia really liked this one and wanted to do a picnic scene so that ants could eat a cupcake. To make an ant, dip one finger in paint and then dot your paper three times. Add legs and antennae with a marker. I really like this project because Olivia actually did some independent research for it. While I was cutting out the paper pieces for the picnic, I asked Olivia to look through her ant book to see what color ants were so that we could use the right color paint. As I cut out the paper I could hear her talking to herself about what all the ants were doing, sometimes laughing at them, and going on about how cool the ants were. When she went through the entire book she came up to the table and we had this conversation.
"Mom, I'm done. I'm ready to paint."
"We don't have any paint picked out yet. Did you find out what color ants are?"
"Ah! I forgot to see what color ants are! I'll be right back"
So, she went back to the book, flipped through a couple of pages, and announced that ants are black and brown.
I think this is really cool. Niki nailed a circle into a piece of scrap wood so that Olivia could make a web. I just tied a long piece of yarn onto one of the nails and Olivia zig zagged the yarn all around. Then we made a pipe cleaner and pom pom spider to go on top.
Spiders generally have 4, 6 or 8 eyes. I love any reason to use googlie eyes and now Olivia does too. See that spider at the top right? Olivia's cutting is getter a lot better.
Painting a ladybug rock. It's bug week. How could we really have a bug week without painting a bug rock? And, she made a dragonfly to look like the ones we caught at the pond.
The dragonfly is a Popsicle stick glued onto a clothes pin with wings and a head cut out of foam.
