One memory that stands out in my mind during my oldest's early elementary years is the experience of hatching chicks. His teacher said it was, "a dud year" and that she'd never do it again because so many didn't make it, but even so, it was truly a neat experience for him. Even 13 years later, he still remembers the chicks chirping, jumping around, and holding them, and the pictures? Sigh...just precious!
You may not jump in to hatch chicks, but the life cycles standard can lead to really great opportunities for students to witness how life cycles work and observe like a scientist. In today's post, I'll be sharing ideas you might find helpful.
Butterfly Life Cycles

Recently, I expanded a resource I developed for Butterfly House by Eve Bunting, and it now includes a Life Cycles Lapbook. If you haven't used these before, you might consider giving them a try. Over the course of your Life Cycles Unit, you would build the lapbook to have a complete resources for review later. We know how much our students need to revisit the science concepts to prepare for SOL testing, and if you've made lapbooks with them, you can pull them out for reference later. Below are images of the lapbooks part of the unit, but it also included guided reading materials for the book which would work well as a mentor text for comprehension skills, writing, or for small group instruction.
In addition to this resource for butterflies (and other life cycles), you might also use these other fabulous resources.
Chicken Life Cycles

If I were mapping out this unit, I believe we'd have a butterfly week, a chicken week, a frog week, and a celebrating us week. How fun would that make this unit for kids! For Chicken week, here are my book recommendations. Of all of these books, I would start with Gail Gibbon's book and refer to it throughout the unit. She THE TOP nonfiction writer in my mind. I also like Rookie Readers as they are fairly controlled with vocabulary. (If you enlarge the text set images, you could probably have your librarian help you gather them.)
Of all the free resources I saw, I just love this one from First Grade Schoolhouse. I think it'd be very useful with several nonfiction books. With it, students describe the stages of the chicken's life cycle.
My friend, Peggy Means at Primary Flourish created chicken life cycle posters for teaching too. They would work well during lessons or as part of a bulletin board. Reading diagrams is a skill kids need too, and I love how she labeled the images.

Frog Life Cycles
Well, I didn't talk about bunnies, but I'll introduce this last section with a great joke for your kids.
What do you get when you cross a frog and a bunny?
What do you get when you cross a frog and a bunny?
(A ribbit!)

For materials, you could use these freebies.



In addition to these printables, I thought this short video clip was amazing. Live action shots just amaze kids, and I love that they give a visual illustration of the life cycle for them to watch/understand.

This is a great post! I can't wait to use it and share it!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much!
DeleteWonderful post! Teaching the butterfly life cycle is my favorite science unit and these are some great book recommendations! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteJackie
Neat Sweet & Hard to Beat
Thanks Jackie! I'm glad it'll help you out. The freebies from Primary Flourish are great for this unit. :-)
DeleteThis will be so helpful for my life cycle unit! Great post! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteSo glad to hear it, Pam.
Delete