Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Grouchy Ladybug and Boa Constrictors

Our Unit of Study on Eric Carle is coming to a close.  As a culminating activity, we are reading The Grouchy Ladybug, making our own grouchy ladybugs and creating a timeline about the story.


In the story, the grouchy ladybug meets up with a boa constrictor at 12:00.  As you might imagine, the kindergartners became focused on the boa constrictor and had lots of questions about them in general.  Well, we decided to do some research and just go with it.  


We started out by googling boa constrictors.  We landed on the National Geographic for Kids site, which was interesting…we saw lots of photos and learned a few facts about boa constrictors, such as they live in tropical climates in Central and South America; they are not poisonous; their prey includes rats, birds, monkeys, and wild pigs, and they swallow their prey whole!  An adult boa can weigh more than 100 pounds and can grow to be up to 18 feet long.  We watched a short video about the snakes, too.  But we still had a question…how long is 18 feet?  We decided to find out.

   

We headed out to the hallway with some masking tape and a yard stick.  


We put a piece of tape on the floor to use as a starting point.  Then we used the yard stick and some classmates to measure off 18 feet.  When we got to 18 feet, we put another piece of tape at that spot.


It seemed like a long way, but we still weren't sure we really understood. Next, we decided to see how many students it would take to make 18 feet.

   


It took about five students laying on the floor all in a row to make 18 feet.  On Monday we will continue reading The Grouchy Ladybug and work on finishing our other ladybug projects.  We will post more photos next week.

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