Praying Mantis Frenzy

We have begun our insect unit with a what I think I know, what we learned and our misconceptions chart. We read two books, a nonfiction book on Praying Mantis and a fiction book called Manuela a Playing Mantis by Don Freeman. We compared the fiction and nonfiction books. The kids did a great job with this. They were truly amazed at the facts about a praying mantis.

Here is our chart:

Then we made and wrote about Praying Mantis. I took the Praying mantis I saw in Deanna Jump's Blog and made it into a follow me activity. I love these activities because all of their projects look different. They all start with the same size paper, scissors and glue. They follow me as I cut and glue. I love the end results!

Here are some of their Praying Mantis':

I have an empty Praying Mantis egg and we passed it around for them to look at it.  They loved this and thought it was the coolest thing. So I ordered an egg from  Insect Lore and hopefully we will be able to see a live egg hatch before the school year ends!!!