Bremen Town Musicians

“The Bremen Town Musicians” is one of my personal favorites among the tales of the Brothers Grimm. In this story, four old farm animals, in some versions having heard that their masters were going to have them — umm… put to sleep, decide to go to Bremen to apply for posts as Town Musicians. Along the way, they go up to a house to earn their dinners with a little impromptu performance. Unbeknownst to them, the house is at that moment being robbed. Their noise scares off the robbers, and they decide to move in and keep house there themselves.

There are several good picture book versions of this story. My favorite is the one illustrated by Hans Fischer, out of print but currently available at Amazon.  Lisbeth Zwerger came out with one in 2007, and it has lovely, dreamy pictures. Eric Blair has a new one coming out this year.

There are also plenty of versions online:

• National Geographic’s Grimms Brothers site has a nice traditional version of the story, with words to read and an audio file to listen to. Play it during naptime for little kids (no scary bits), or let students of any age draw illustrations while they listen. There’s also a map and background information on the brothers, and how it happened that they became folklorists.
• Kiddoons has an interactive read-and-listen version of the story, and a game. The game involves listening to the four musicians singing in a variety of different orders and repeating the pattern. The pattern gets longer each time, beginning with only two sounds and going on up (I got to Round 8 before the noises got to me). While I think you will want headphones for this game, it is excellent for patterning and memory and concentration training.

Once the story has been read and enjoyed, it is time to try some retelling activities:

• A Reader’s Theater script for the story.
• A coloring page
• A character map for the donkey makes a good starting point for discussions either of characterization in literature or of character issues.

Social Studies

• The four animals are too old to do their jobs. Some retellings of the story say that their masters are going to get rid of them, and some do not, but there is always a suggestion that they are too old to do their jobs. There is a difference between working animals and those who don’t have jobs. Ask your class what jobs the animals in their homes have, or what jobs animals have in the community. Discuss how this has changed over time. Now could be a good time to talk about working animals like seeing-eye dogs. It’s important not to interact with guide dogs while they’re working. Petting a guide dog or trying to call to these dogs when they’re working can distract them and even put the dog and owner in danger.
• At the time when this story was first written down, being too old to work was a problem for humans as well as donkeys and cats. How are old people supported in your community? PBS has an up-to-date lesson on Social Security from Newshour. Here is one (in a PDF file) on stereotypes about the elderly — and how similar they can be to stereotypes about teens.
• Some writers say that “The Bremen Town Musicians” is a story about workers banding together to help one another and overcoming their troubles by doing so. This story could make an interesting lead-in to your study of unions and labor movements with older students.
• The animals planned to be Town Musicians. Is this a job currently available in your town? Probably not, although your city may help support your symphony orchestra. But just about all towns have some jobs. What jobs does your city pay for? Ours has Urban Foresters, which sounds almost as cool as Town Musicians.

Math

• Here is a suggestion for incorporating basic time-telling into the reading of the story.
• The musician’s famous pyramid only works because each animal is smaller than the one beneath it. Have the students draw pictures of other animal pyramids, based on the actual comparative sizes of the animals. Emphasize that the animals must go from the biggest on the bottom to the smallest on the top. If the students aren’t sure how big various animals are, encourage them to look it up. This could make a good center, after the lesson is finished. Put names and pictures of animals of all different sizes on index cards, have students add the typical height or weight of the animal to the back of the card, and put all the cards in a shoe box or pocket folder to use for sequencing.

Art

• Fold a piece of construction paper in half, with the fold at the top. Letting the fold be the back of the animal, draw a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster. Cut them out. You should have animals that can stand up. Use the animals to retell the story, and then stack them up one on top of the other, using tape or glue to keep them in order.
• The animals are sad and worried as they tell their stories. Once they get together, they are excited and happy, looking forward to their new adventures. The robbers are frightened. The musicians are proud of themselves. In the end, they are contented. This makes a fine story for practicing drawing facial expressions. Here’s a neat lesson on drawing emotions that could easily be adapted to this story.

Music

• Depending on the version of the story you read, the animals may all be singers, or they may plan to play specific instruments, like the lute and the kettle drum, or they may just have a general plan to be musicians. Study musical instruments and singing along with this story — it’s a natural extension. Try a virtual tour of the National Music Museum or of the Virtual Instrument Museum, where you can hear many different instruments from around the world. The “Energy in the Air” Thinkquest is one of my favorite music study websites — and you might want to visit the “music” tag in “Categories” above to explore more possibilities.

Cinderella Centers

Josepha shows file folder centers for telling time, designed to go with your Cinderella unit.

Apple Classroom Theme Ideas

You can’t go wrong with the classics. If that’s not enough of a reason to consider apples for a classroom theme, here are a few more reasons:

• There is nothing so easy to find as apple decorations. Choose apples and you can get your room put together fast. There are stickers, pocket charts, notepads, library pockets, substitute folders, planbooks, homework passes — really, it’s hard to think of any classroom need that doesn’t come in apple designs. You will also find many different styles, from Debbie Mum and Susan Winget’s sophisticated designs to the rollicking cartoon apples of Carson-Dellosa and Trend.
• Arkansas’s state flower is the apple blossom; Michigan, too. Several states, including New York and Vermont, have the apple as a state fruit. Seize the opportunity to cover one of the state symbols early.
• Real apples are inexpensive and readily available, unlike, say, real monkeys.

Here are a few of the bulletin board choices:

• Scholastic’s Giant Apple Basket! Bulletin Board has a big basket full of warm-colored apples. Put student names on the apples and put this on your door to welcome the new students.
• Apple Time! Calendar Bulletin Board with the goofy Teachers’ Friend grin and all the calendar pieces you’ll need.
• Happy Classroom Apples are giant apple slices with messages like “Take turns!” and “Show kindness!” They make a fine bulletin board, but we also like them for a big book — just laminate and put them together with metal rings.
• Carson-Dellosa’s D.J.Inkers Cottage Window looks like a window in your wall, and opens up to show a happy bear with bright apples.

One nice bulletin board option is the Giant Apple Basket. The basket has a welcome sign, and you can put the kids’ names on the apples and group them in and around the basket on the door for the beginning of the school year. But you won’t have to put it away afterwards. There are lots more ways to use this set.

I like this bulletin board set for vocabulary. You can collect vocabulary words in the basket all through the year, writing them on the apples.

It works well for a math terms wall, too. Or write the names of books the class has read on the apples. Or the names of important historical figures as you study them. Chemical elements. Anything where you want to be able to say, “Look at all the things we’ve learned. Remember the lessons leading up to this? Now we’re adding something.” The very process of adding to the apple basket helps reinforce learning and increase confidence with a sense of accomplishment.

Shapes Etc. has a fun Apple Pie Center idea. It’s an adaptable learning game that’s fun to make.

The CTP apple number line alternates red and green apples for skip counting and odd/even work.

Another of our favorites  is the  D. J. Inkers Happy Helper Bears set. This set takes the Apple Bear who already looked good on cutouts, name plates, and more, and makes it into a practical job chart.

This set has a worm in the apple, so it’s a good one if you like to do bookworm reading boards, with “A Bushel of Books” or “Get Your Teeth Into a Good Book” or “Be a Bookworm.”

Other apple sayings for your bulletin board:

• “A Bunch of Good Apples,”
• “The New Crop,”
• “The Pick of the Crop,”
• “The Apples of [teacher's name]‘s Eye,”
• “Apples Up On Top,”
• “Apple Polishers,”
• “The Apple Corps”

Besides the decorations, there are lots of fun and worthwhile classroom activities involving apples.

Basics

• Use red, yellow, and green Apple Cut-Outs for patterning practice.
• Make your Venn diagrams with big apple cutouts.
• Use any of the many apple cutouts to make centers.

Social Studies

• Read the story of Johnny Appleseed. We like Steven Kellogg’s picture book version, which you’ll find if you click that link. You can also use an online version for emergent readers, with buttons to push to have the sentences read aloud by the computer. Check out our Johnny Appleseed Lesson Plans for lots of ideas and links.
• Study up on apples to find out what regions of the country are best for growing apples (Ms. Pinkerton, this regions tip is for you!) Here is an early-reader page on the subject that includes read-aloud buttons, a quiz, and links about apples. We see this as a good computer center for young students who need more practice, or for the youngest ones who are ready to move ahead of their classmates.
• Arkansas, where I live, is a great place to grow apples. The pomologists at the University of Arkansas have come up with fine new varieties, but the Arkansas Black may be our most famous apple. It was developed in the 1870s in Benton County, and is considered one of the most beautiful apples, and one of the best keepers. See what the Arkansas Encyclopedia says about the Arkansas apple industry here.
• Read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman and find all the locations of the raw ingredients on the map. Check out our lesson plans for this book.

Science

• Compare the nutrition information for apples with labels on other favorite snacks.
• Use apples for float/sink lessons. Here is a link to a basic lesson on the subject.
• When cutting up apples for the other lessons on this page, first set one slice aside untouched in a Ziplock bag. Once all the activities have been finished, do the same with one of the much-handled slices. Observe the two slices for a week and notice the differences. Use these observations to lead into a lesson on the importance of handwashing.

Math

• Bring in some apples (or have the kids each bring one) and measure them. Consider all the different ways you can measure the apples, and line them up from biggest to smallest, changing the line order if you need to when you change the way you measure them.
• Have each student guess the number of seeds in his or her apple. Cut them in half across to see the star shape and count the seeds, comparing the actual number with the guesses. Young children can make counting books with their seeds.
• Cut apples up for fractions practice.
• Weigh the apples and determine how many apples there are per pound. You can set the scales up as a  center and let all the kids weigh apples and give their results on this question. Then add and divide to determine the average.
• Cut up the apples and see how many apples (or how many pounds of apples) will fit in a pie plate.
• Find out how many apples there are in a peck (2 gallons) or a bushel (4 pecks), and sing Frank Loesser’s “A Bushel and a Peck” to help those measures stay in the kids’ minds.
• Divide into teams and have each team use the numbers they’ve come up with to construct apple word problems for the other team and have a great math bee.

English

• Sort the apples and brainstorm all the different ways to describe the apples. Give each student a chance to describe one apple so thoroughly that the others can guess which particular apple is being described. Do this orally or in writing, depending on the skills you want to work on.
• Invite a pomologist or apple grower to visit the class and talk about apples. Practice listening, taking notes, outlining, and writing a summary from notes. I like to use a pocket chart for this, so the kids can see how the shape of the outline and of the different styles of notetaking can help make the information quick to grasp.

Art

• Cut apples in different ways, dip the cut sides in paint, and make apple prints with them.
• Apples are classic still life objects to draw.

Puts you in the mood for school, doesn’t it?

Western Classroom Theme Ideas

A Western theme makes for a fun classroom at any grade level. I’m adding some state history to it, and you might be able to do the same.

There are ready-made decoratives for this theme:

• Wanted: Hard Working Helpers is a new job chart from TCR with the look of an old Wanted poster.
• The new Carson Dellosa Western Bulletin Board Set has a cowgirl who really is a cow and a steer for a cowboy, plus a covered wagon and cacti.
• Western Round-Up Bulletin Board has a little cowgirl and cowboy and their horse.
• Welcome To Our Corral from North Star has pastel cowboy boots, cacti, bandannas, and more with happy faces. There’s also a corral, and a header saying, “Welcome to Our Corral.”
• Saddle Up and Read, Buckaroo! has desert animals curled up with books — witty enough for older students.

We made this center to compare facts about cowboys and Native Americans. We used library pockets and a file folder. We adhered four pockets to the center. We used a boot for cowboys, a footprint for Native Americans, and put both symbols on the third pocket. A Western themed pocket holds strips of card with facts on them. Students pull the facts from the storage pocket and sort them into things that are true of cowboys, things that are true of Native Americans, and things that were true of both during the Wild West era.

Put answers on the back to make your center self-checking.

When you think of the Wild West, you think of Tombstone, Arizona and Laredo, Texas. But you also think of Dodge City, Kansas, and you should think of “Hell on the Border” Ft. Smith, Arkansas.

In fact, look at this list of robberies by the notorious Jesse James and his gang, find them on the map, and see for yourself how wild the Midwest was when it was the frontier.

(While you’re at it, do some math. Add up the take at all the robberies, use the dates to calculate the number of months the robberies covered, and figure up the desperadoes’ income. You could also calculate how old James was when he did these deeds.)

As the United States got larger and the American western frontier moved toward the west, what was “west” changed. The first daylight bank robbery (it was Jesse James and his gang) was in Liberty, Missouri, in 1866. Liberty is now a small Midwestern college town and the home of Josepha’s choir. But in 1866, it was the Wild West.

So when you do your Wild West lessons, don’t limit yourself to West of the Pecos. Spend some time exploring your state’s Wild West heritage, if you’ve got one. I’ve included some information here about outlaws and lawmen from the state where I live, Arkansas, which will be suitable for a Western theme in any region.

Wild West books:

• You Wouldn’t Want to Live in a Wild West Town! focuses on the negatives — a good antidote to the cleaned up image of the west in so many movies.
• Westward Ho!: An Activity Guide to the Wild West has lots of hands-on activities for learning about westerners from the voyageurs to the gauchos.
• Wild West (DK Eyewitness Books) has lots of pictures and limited text, but plenty of information, too. It can be a good choice for reluctant readers as well as younger students.
• Gryphon House Wild Wild West is a nice theme unit for young children. I like Gryphon House theme books because they can be counted upon to be developmentally appropriate, well organized, and fun.
• Cowboy Small by Lois Lenski is a classic for little ones.
• Cowboys and Cowgirls: YippeeYay! by Gail Gibbons has lots of information.
• Cindy Ellen: A Wild Western Cinderella is very fun, makes some good character education points, and works with your Cinderella study, too.
• Bubba, The Cowboy Prince is the perfect companion book to Cindy Ellen. Bring out the Venn Diagram. Older students will enjoy these books, too, and you can get some serious discussion going about Wild West images in our culture.
• How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Mark Teague isn’t all about cowboys, but it’s one of my favorite back to school books, so I snuck it in here.

Wild West Lessons:

• U.S.Deputy Marshall is a PDF file from the Ft. Smith National Heritage Site containing pre-visit activities for those planning a visit, but also including information and activities about U. S. Marshalls.
• The “Old West Dinner Party” is a fun assignment combining research and critical thinking.
• An advanced level lesson on “Iconic Figures of the American West” from the Autry National Center. This lesson, too, can easily be narrowed to your state.
• PBS has a collection of Wild West lessons for middle and high school students on a broad range of topics.
• Enjoy the tall tales of Pecos Bill.

Arkansas Outlaws:

• Here is the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture article on Bill Doolin.
• Here you can read newspaper articles about Belle Starr from the 1800s. Here is a biography of Starr.
• Jesse James was a Missouri boy, but he did spend time in Arkansas as well. Use this timeline of James’s life to practice map skills, add to your classroom timeline, and work with dates. Here you can find newspaper articles about James, and see the beginning of the “American Robin Hood” legend about him. Here is an easy reading passage telling one of the stories of his Robin Hood-like exploits. You might have a class debate: “Jesse James: Folk Hero or Terrorist?”

Arkansas Lawmen

• Read here about Bass Reeves, one of the first African-American lawmen. Gary Paulsen’s book, The Legend of Bass Reeves, makes a great read aloud or extensive reading for upper elementary and up.
• Here is the Arkansas Encyclopedia article about “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker. This controversial figure would be a good one to use in a point of view exercise.

Art Connections

• Kristin Abraham’s painting of the Ft. Smith jail known as “Hell on the Border” is accompanied here by her description of her experience visiting the historic site. Have your students draw or paint a site in a way that shows their emotional reaction to learning about the history of the place.
• Here are the words to “The Ballad of Belle Starr,” by Bobby Barnett, and here is Woody Guthrie’s song about her. Venn Diagram time! Challenge your class to write a ballad about a modern celebrity, or compare these ballads with other outlaw ballads, such as “The Ballad of Jesse James.” Woody Guthrie did a version of that song, too. Learn more about ballads at our Ballads Lesson Plans.
• Use this gunslinger-themed game to practice note values in music class.
• Read or see the movie of the novel True Grit by Charles McColl Portis. Compare this fictional treatment with what you’ve learned about Ft. Smith’s wild days.
• Arkansas was never part of the trail drives and cowboy culture, but we had some pop culture cowgirls, including Dale Evans and Patsy Montana, composer of “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart” (hear it here). Have students make a collage of pop culture images of women of the Wild West, and compare them with real Western women like Belle Starr.

Bug Classroom Theme Ideas

What would spring and summer be without bugs? This is a theme with lots of ready-made options for decorating the classroom. Teacher’s Friend’s 0 – 20 Bugs! Bulletin Board doubles as a counting bulletin board, TCR’s We’ve Got the Writing Bug Mini Bulletin Board Set features the writing process, and Carson Dellosa’s Big Bugs has lots of happy cartoon insects.

Trend’s Buggy for Books is another cute bulletin board set with associated bookmarks, award certificates, and such.

Grab their title and be “Buggy for Learning,” or for second grade or math or whatever your class is all about. Other bulletin board slogans for your insect theme classroom:

• We’re a-buzz for math!
• Flying high!
• Don’t bug us– we’re studying!

Amazing Insects Educational Poster Series are truly beautiful laminated posters covering things like metamorphosis and defense among insects.

Continue saving your personal energy by printing out some reproducibles:

• Lots of insect coloring pages here, in alphabetical order. Lots of ads, too, but if you can tolerate that, you will find a whole bunch of realistic coloring pages that you could even use in upper grades on really hot days.
• Insects at Enchanted Learning has reproducibles ranging from ant picnic writing paper to mosquito life cycle sequencing cards. There is also an activity here in which the kids circle the correctly-spelled insect names, a math worksheet, and some foreign language materials.
• A well-designed insect worksheet that would be a great page in a science journal or class bug book, or a good start to a report on an particular insect.

And here are some bug games to print out:

• Nice, simple bug dominoes to print out and put in a center.
• An insect wordsearch from Science Spot.
• Cute but cartoony bug bingo cards.

Once you’ve dressed up your room, you may want to study insects as well. In general, I follow the national science standards and include the following topics in all lessons on living things:

• the morphology, or shapes of the creatures
• their life cycles
• their habitats
• their relationships to humans

With insects, this settles down to a lesson on the three body parts, eyes, wings, antennae, and internal organs; a discussion of metamorphosis, complete and incomplete; an acknowledgment that everything we usually say about habitats is is irrelevant to insects; and a rich history of love and hate between humans and insects.

Here are some online resources for insect lesson plans::

• “The Old Woman Who Was Kind to Insects” is a brief story from the Inuit. In it, an old woman is left behind when her nomadic community lives on, with only a few insects to eat. She spares the insects, and they arrange for her to become young again. This is not a heartwarming story, exactly, but it is a very interesting one, with many opportunities to discuss things like Inuit culture, the way old people are treated in different societies, literal and metaphorical metamorphosis… It is one of a collection of  stories about generosity, including activities for grades 9 through 12. The story is short enough to read aloud, and a good choice for illustrating — naturally, you’ll include plenty of insect observation
• An Insect Scrapbook is a wonderfully open-ended project that lends itself not only to science, but also to art and writing. You can start a collection of insect books for future classes to enjoy. You’ve probably done something of this kind before, but it may have been a while since you’ve done it. Sometimes I need a reminder of things I got tired of at some point in the past.
• Orkin Virtual Roach is positively creepy, as well as a wonderfully thorough examination of insect anatomy. This is a good alternative to observing live insects if you’d rather not have them in your classroom.
• A Steampunk bug craft project is a serious art lesson for older students — but you can tone it down for your younger students if you like. Christi Friesen is the designer.

In fact, there’s nothing like having some actual bugs in the classroom to add life to your insect theme. The Insect Lore Praying Mantis Pagoda Kit is a great way to introduce kids to one of the more dramatic insects. Their Creature Peeper lets you catch your own bugs and share them, confident that they’re safer than in the old jam jar.

Here’s a buggy center we like. This center works on spelling, but you can use it for anything that involves sorting.

1. Open a file folder and lay it out.
2. Choose a cutout that goes with your theme — we picked a ladybug. Label the cutouts with the categories you’re using. We’re using three possible spellings of a sound: “-le,” “-al,” and “-el.”
3. Attach the cutouts to the file folder, leaving an opening in the center.
4. Attach a pocket to the file folder. Write the directions on the pocket.
5. Write out sorting cards, either on 3×5″ cards or on smaller cutouts. We’re using insect words like “mandible,” “larval,” and “damselfly.” We wrote them with blanks (“mandib_ _”) so students could decide whether they belonged with the “-le” group (correct), the “-al,” or the “-el.” Write the answer on the back of the card so your center will be self-checking.
6. Put the sorting cards into the pocket, close up the file folder, and put it into your centers area.

Here are the words we used:

• mandible
• spiracle
• ventrical
• chrysalis
• larval
• nymphal
• pupal
• dorsal
• bumblebee
• damselfly
• beetle
• exoskeleton
• social

Ladybug Classroom Theme

Ladybugs make a cheerful theme for a summer classroom. Once you establish the theme, it’s easy to carry through, just by using red and black. You can make a bulletin board with red background paper and black paper spots and you’re set.

There are ready-made bulletin boards with ladybugs:

• The Love Bugs Bulletin Board is not all ladybugs, but they predominate.
• Buggy for Books has loads of cartoon arthropods, plus a headline.

Once you’ve got your bulletin board decoratives up, just say you’re “Buggy for School” or books or math or second grade or whatever it might be.

Trend’s Lucky Ladybug cutouts are an excellent choice for Poke’n'Peek Centers.

Our friend Myra Grayson from Carson-Dellosa showed us how to make Poke’n'Peek centers. They’re great because you can use them for almost anything you’re studying. Say it’s addition. Punch holes down each side of the cutout. Write problems from one fact family next to each hole. So, for example, you might have “1+1=” next to the first hole, “1+2=” by the next, and so forth.

Turn the cutout over. Now, carefully matching up questions and answers, write the answer to each question by the hole that’s nearest to the question. In the example above, you’d put “2″ by the first hole, “3″ by the next. and so on.

Students use the centers by poking a pencil through the hole, answering the question aloud, and then turning the cutout over to check their answers.

We’ve used Carson-Dellosa’s  ladybug cutouts here, but any kind will do — the larger the open space, the more problems you can add. Note, too, that you can use anything with a clear answer and a fairly short question. If you’re studying presidents, put “First President?” with the answer “Washington,” and it works just as well.

Go outside for a ladybug hunt and some fresh air. Ladybugs don’t mind human contact and they don’t bite, so you may want to allow students to set their hands where the ladybugs can climb onto them. Picking up insects of any kind can lead to accidental squishing. For a more controlled situation, grow some ladybugs in your classroom.

Insect Lore is our go-to for bug supplies. Their Insect Lore Ladybug Land is designed to offer maximum comfort for the ladybugs and maximum observational opportunity for the class. You’ll get a certificate to mail in for the ladybugs, and it’ll take a little while for them to arrive. This means that you can reuse the ladybug habitat in future classes. It also means you can’t wait around very long before you order. Spend the wait time having the class learn about ladybugs so you’ll be ready to welcome your new class pets.

There are plenty of ladybug accessories to get the complete look for your classroom. Our favorites:

• The Folkmanis Ladybug Puppet. This ladybug has six legs, naturally, but you only have five fingers to put in them. We recommend stuffing that last leg with cotton so your ladybug will look her best.
• Carson-Dellosa’s Ladybugs Shape Stickers come 72 to the package, so you can use them for all kinds of counting activities, or just add them to everyone’s papers.
• The Grouchy Ladybug Game is nice for a center.

Ladybug books also abound.

Ladybugs is a basic factual introduction.

The Gentleman Bug, by Julian Hector, is a new picture book that answers the age-old question, “What do you call a male ladybug?” Here are some ideas for using it in the classroom:

• The endpapers of the book are a map of The Garden, where the Gentleman Bug and his friends live. Use it to practice basic directions (“Turn right at Pollen Hill”) or prepositions (“Go over the bridge and around the palace.”). Show the book. Ask students to follow with their eyes as you give directions and say where they’d end up if they followed those directions.

• The Gentleman Bug is a dreamy fellow who reads all the time and in fact teaches a class of some sort on the village green. Some of the other insects make fun of him, but he isn’t bothered — until a Ladybug arrives. She doesn’t notice him, so he analyzes the situation and makes a plan. The illustration of this analysis shows the Gentleman Bug with his students in his cozy study filled with books and art, with his globe and telescope nearby. He has his research materials spread on the table, including models and drawings of his plan. Discuss with the students what sort of problem-solving approach the Gentleman Bug uses to deal with his problem, and what other sorts of apporaches he might have taken.
• The Gentleman Bug’s solution consists of dressing up and getting a cool new set of wheels for the occasion. Things don’t go as he had hoped. Much of the story at this point is told in pictures rather than words. Have students write out the events of the evening in a chronological sequence.
• The Gentleman Bug is sad, but tries to forget the Ladybug for several days. This is another good chance to consider the various problem-solving approaches available to him. Ask students how the Gentleman Bug might feel, and what he might have said (he never speaks in the book).
• In the end, he finds that the Ladybug is the new librarian and that she enjoys hanging out with him and reading. There is no explanation for the Ladybug’s initial indifference to the Gentleman Bug. Ask students to write and illustrate a page explaining this aspect of the story.

The Grouchy Ladybug is a classic ladybug story. There are plenty of online resources for this book:

• Eric Carle’s official page has a compilation of lesson ideas.
• Vicki Blackwell has lots of fun ideas.
• A Quest for Respect is a webquest that includes time and character issues.
• Skip counting by fives is a great connection for Carle’s book. Reinforce it with another book, Lots of Ladybugs!: Counting by Fives .

Ladybugs across the curriculum:

• Enchanted Learning has a ladybug lifecycle reproducible. Insect Lore’s
• Ladybug Life Cycle Stages models add a hands-on element to any worksheet approach.
• The traditional rhyme for ladybugs goes, “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are all gone.” A little gruesome, maybe, but you can always use it to introduce fire safety. The USFA has a good fire safety site for kids.

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