Theme - Bug Theme

We did a bulletin board with the bugs theme, "It Bugs Me". I asked each student what bugs them. It was expressive and fun, with a wide range of expected responses like "my brother" or " my sister," to "taking the trash can to the street on the wrong day," etc.

To encourage good citizenship you can choose a B.U.G. (Being unsually Good) each week.

Job chart: "We Are Creeping for Something To Do" have a large tree with leaves. On each leaf write the jobs. On lady bugs, caterpillars, spiders, ants, and others write the students names.

"We Are All A Flutter In 2nd Grade" Have large flowers all over the wall and place butterflies and lady bugs with students names on them on the flowers.

Just about anything can work for a classroom theme! Pick something you love. Here are some ideas for ladybugs that I came up with:

Ladybug Theme:

Welcome Board: "GREAT STUDENTS SPOTTED!" Put each student's name on a little leaf and put a giant ladybug in the center.

Jobs: "Busy Bugs!" Put a cardboard leaf with a clothespin glued to it and write the job on the leaf. Give each student a bug with their name and rotate jobs as needed.

Behavior Board: If you use a card pulling system in a pocket chart, you could customize it by cutting out five leaves for each student and numbering them 1-5. Students could change their leaf as a consequence.

Individual behavior management: Make small desk incentive charts for students with clip art. Give them a ladybug with no spots (use white out or a black marker before copying) Use colored dot stickers or stars to give to students to add to their ladybug. Make the goal the ladybug who is "spotted" with the most dots!

Reward coupons: "Bug Bucks" Put a giant ladybug in the center and students can earn these for various rewards.

Hall Pass: Look at the dollar store for a giant plastic ladybug. Write your class name and room number on it's back with a paint marker. Or maybe you can find a wood cut shape at a craft store. (I used a plastic fish last year to go with my ocean theme and it really held up!)

Do Not Disturb Testing Sign: "Please don't BUG us, we're testing!" With a big ladybug on it of course.

Interest inventory: Create a large ladybug with huge dots that students can write inside. Specify a certain thing for students to write/draw in each dot such as "Your favorite subject" "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It would help get to know students the first week of school.

Bulletin Board Extras: Check out fabric for great bulletin board backgrounds. I'm sure there are some ladybug themed fabrics and they never fade!

Nametags: Use a program such as Microsoft Publisher or Print Shop to create student name tags for their desks. You could use a leaf background with a little ladybug on it and put their name in the center. I print these on cardstock and cover with heavy duty packing tape and they last a very long time!

Reading corner: Cover the corner walls with red paper and cut out black circles and paste all around. Use red or black carpet and bean bags. Put a sign that says "Snug as a bug in the reading corner!"

Bug Fun:

BULLETIN BOARDS:
Good work: "Bee-utiful Work" with bees;

OR "Works that Glows!" with little lightning bugs

Daily Info: "The Buzz" or "Look What's Buzzing"

Jobs: "Worker Bees" or "Classroom Jobhive" with
a big beehive with jobs on it.

Welcome Board: "Look who's buzzing into ___'s room!"

Material: Find colorful bug fabric to use as backgrounds.

*READING CORNER: Put up green paper around the corner, and glue large silk leaves all over it. Glue tiny plastic bugs around. Put a couple of plants. "Buzz on in to read a good book!"

*WREATH: I made a little wreath for the door that said "BEE YOUR BEST!" and I glued plastic bugs all over it.

*MAGNETS: I hot-glued big plastic bugs to clothespins and used big magnets. These were very handy for the boards to hang stuff or post memos.

*COMPUTER BACKGROUNDS: Put closeup pictures of bugs on your computer background(s).

*NAMETAGS: Use clipart of giant leaves with little ladybugs on them. Put students names on and laminate.

BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT: For a class goal, put up a large paper leaf and give students a designated goal for how many ladybugs they must earn to be stuck on the leaf. For individual behavior, put up a bulletin board with a big net or a drawing of a net. Put every students bug in the net. Make a desginated spot for students to move for each rule infraction... for example, a warning means you move your bug to the edge of the net, the next level would move to a leaf and so on. This would be title "CAUGHT BEING GOOD!"

CEILING DECORATIONS: There are a lot of big bugs, butterflys, bees, etc. that you could get to hang from your ceiling.

CLASSROOM NEWSLETTER: Call it "News from the Hive" or "The Weekly Buzz"

I like the busy bugs.
Special helper (star of the week): King/queen Bee
attendance/cafeteria order carrier: Monarch (because they navigate so for)
Class Librarian: Book worm

What types of jobs do you have in the class?

Good work board: Here's the Buzz
We Carry our Own (with di cuts of ants holding each persons work; maybe the kids names on the ant)

This isn't really a practice, but more of a fun reward for finishing the alphabet. Just last week we created letter bugs. The students created bug pictures out of as many cursive letters as they could. For example, I drew a lowercase "a" on the board. Then I turned it into a butterfly by rounding out the rest of the tail of the letter, adding a head and antennea, and creating a body. Some of the kids got very creative and ended up using many letters to create one large bug. O for the head, a for the body, c's for the eyes, etc. They turned out really cute.

I like to make love bugs with my class - they make a large red heart out of construction paper and then decorate it with googly eyes and black construction paper- ladybug style spots (shaped liek hearts), legs (folded like fans if they want to make them jump out) and antennae, they look so cute!

I take small bug pictures and add a magnetic strip on the back. Students move them to either hot/cold lunch- I have to have a daily lunch count. I ask my students, "Did you move your lunch bug?"

I am doing a bug theme also; ladybugs, ants, butterflies, caterpillars, and bees.

I'm calling the newsletter "The Weekly Buzz".

For behavior, I'm doing A Garden of Good Behavior. I am putting up a flower garden bulletin board. As children earn good behavior, a bug cutout with their name is added to the garden. At the end of a specified amount of time, kids with a certain amount of bugs in the garden get an award.

I have the Cricut machine and I used the cartridge Walk in My Garden a lot. You can tie flowers into this theme so easily. And the cartridge made some cute bug cutouts. My room is going to look great. I can't wait to see it all come together.

Get an entomologist to come share. Contact a local university, or a nearby farming co-op or seed business. For example, we have Pioneer seeds and Becks Hybrids. It's free and the kids LOVE it.

Hope this helps... I used this theme last year and made the chart for my behavior system. I will attach the parent note too.

Here it is. (djinkers.com)

When using bugs as your theme, you can make a helper board entitled, "Worker Ants". You could have a large ant mound with children's names on ants next to jobs. Or you could use bees and call it "Worker Bees".