Animal Life Cycles - Part 1

As part of my grade science curriculum, every year I complete a unit on animal life cycles.  I LOVE this unit.  Not only is it fun for my students to watch the metamorphosis (frogs, butterflies) in different animals, but I love the literature that I use during my guided reading block to accompany the unit!!!  I thought I would share some the literature ideas and activities that I use.

We started this unit with the life cycle of a butterfly!

I started this unit out by reading the story "Waiting for Wings" by Lois Ehlert.  This book has beautiful pictures in it!  This story shows the metamorphosis of the butterfly.  Not only do we read the story as a "shared" reading, we also do partner reading.  For my students who have limited verbal or reading skills I use a couple of technology resources to include them in partner reading.  First, myself or I will ask another student to read the story on to a step-by-step switch.  The second resource I use is "Bookflix" ($).  This is an online scholastic book club that has over 100 fictional titles in digital formats.  For every fictional title their is a paired non-fiction book.  There are also comprehension activities for each pair of books.  Luckily "Waiting for Wings" is on Bookflix.

The second title we read for the life cycle of the butterfly was "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle.  This story is an oldie but a goodie!!!  My students love this story!!!  They all read it out loud as i read it to them!!!  This book is on the Online Storytime on the Barnes & Noble webpage.  I always love for my kiddos to interact with different versions of books - digital, classroom made, big books, iPad books etc.

Attached is a smart notebook file that I created with my class.  It has a KWL chart in it and a few vocabulary activities.  There is also a link for the students to create a tagul for the information they learned about the butterfly life cycle.