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.

Car Classroom Themes

A car theme works for any grade level, from the cutest cartoon car for little kids to examinations of physics and engineering for advanced science students. You can use the concept of a race, of revving up or tuning up skills, or of a road trip along the information superhighway.

Trend’s Race to Success bulletin board has a racetrack and plenty of race car cutouts. You can also go with a NASCAR Checkered 3-by-5 Foot Flag with Grommets, just the right size for a bulletin board, or find similar wrapping paper for a background.

Race tracks or maps make excellent ways to chart progress toward goals. A big road map with flags can show progress, from the number of kids who have memorized their multiplication tables to the steps you’ve completed toward your National History Day projects. TCR has a great behavior management  How Am I Doing Today Mini Bulletin Board with traffic signs:

Bulletin board sayings for a car theme might include

• “Race to Success” (those words come with the Trend bulletin board set, but you can do it yourself and add your subject, year, or goal)
• “Rev Up Your Writing” (again there’s a ready-made set with those words, but you could rev up whatever needs revving in your classroom),
• “We’re in the Driver’s Seat,”using Colorful Cut Outs: Race Cars by Carson Dellosa and adding student photos in the car windows. Use Critters in Cars cut outs instead and have funny animal drivers for an equally cute effect with less trouble.
• “We’re Winners!”
• “Going the Extra Mile”
• “Zoom into…” third grade or what have you
• “Join the Race”
• “Taking the High Road”
• “Start Your Engines!”
• “On the Road Again”
• “On the Road to…” your goal or subject.

Learning Resources MiniMotors Counters can bring the whole transportation theme into the class, or you can pick out just the cars for color sorting. There are six different types of vehicles, from cars and trucks to boats and planes, in six different colors for counting, sorting, and pattern work.

The Toymaker’s Race Car is a simple printable toy car to make. Kids can make their own to use as manipulatives or for a following directions lesson.

Once you’ve got the room decorated, try out a few road-related instructional ideas:

• Work on standards about communities by building a paper city around the walls at floor level. Brainstorm about the kinds of buildings people living in a city would need, the kinds of green space or other open space you need, the transportation options, and all the other issues appropriate for your grade, and plan a model city. Or recreate the town where you live. You can do both, and then compare the two and write up a proposal to improve your town. Send it to your mayor or city council. This project can be simple or sophisticated, depending on the ages of your students and the standards you want to address.
• Use recyclables to build cars. Juice boxes, cans, and milk cartons can make great car bodies, and jar lids can be wheels. A lot of choices of materials will up the creativity quotient. Work with the class ahead of time to develop a rubric for this project. In Arkansas history lessons, we’ve done this with wagons, and the requirement was that the wagon had to make it all the way down the sidewalk (or it could be a hall) with a potato pioneer in place. Build convertibles with the same rules. Lots of issues about force and motion come up in this lesson.
• Introduce force and motion at the simplest level by exploring ways things can move:

• Keep on with physical science and bring math in too, by having speed trials with the cars you made. You can also use toy cars. I like to let the students vary the conditions as they choose, leaving a very free atmosphere for exploration, but you can also tailor the experiments to a particular point you want to make. Either way, this PDF file gives a great form for collecting and analyzing data. Here is a complete lesson plan on the subject.
• Here is a PDF for building an air-powered car from Engineer’s Week. From the same excellent source, a lesson on how to calculate the number of lemons required to power a car.
• Mapping is a natural connection for this theme. Compare road maps with political and topographical maps, plan a road trip, or study the interstate highway system.
• The word “racecar” happens to be a palindrome. Kick off your vocabulary study by finding all the other palindromes you can.
• Arkansas roads have a place in our history. The stretch from Winslow to Ft. Smith was considered the worst part of the entire Butterfield Trail. The Good Roads Movement (started by cyclists) was an important part of the 1920s tourist trade. Read here about the roads and highways of Arkansas in The Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
• Gather ’round and sing Woody Guthrie’s “Take You Riding in my Car.” Find the lyrics here. See Bill Wolfe’s YouTube performance of the song here.

Pirate Classroom Theme

Not everyone approves of using pirates in the classroom, but you can’t deny that many students find them appealing and even exciting. There was a time when the line between pirate and explorer was fairly fine (Sir Francis Drake springs to mind), and there certainly is a long literary tradition of exciting and romantic piracy. We think that if you pick and choose, you can enjoy a pirate unit without trivializing the continuing problem of piracy or encouraging crime or cruelty.

To make your classroom look pleasantly piratical, you can use pirate party gear like the flag that says “Pirates Only; No Trespassing. All Others Will Walk the Plank“  or the Melissa & Doug Pirate Chest. Carson Dellosa has a new pirate theme, with desk plates and paired pirate/treasure accents.

Carson’s Big Treasure Chest and Welcome Aboard Bulletin Board Set are the classics for the bulletin board. Teacher’s Friend has a  Sea Adventure Bulletin Board with pirate animals and a ready-made “Set Sail for Learning” banner. TCR has a new Island Adventure Bulletin Board Set with kids playing pirates.

There are also oceanic items like wave and sand borders, and Carson-Dellosa’s Big Tropical Tree . Putting together a selection of these things can provide piratical ambience.

You can also do it yourself. Haul out the old overhead projector, tape some bulletin board paper to the wall, and let your inner artist take over. I have some inspirational links for you:

• The Virtual Vine has pirate classroom links and some simple graphics.
• Lucy Learns has piratical printables like dot-to-dot and wordsearch sheets, with links to simple clip art that you could use for bulletin boards.
• Teach Factory has a set of pirate printables.
• Cartoon Critters has a learn-to-draw page that could help you draw your own pirate ship for your bulletin board. The page is covered with ads, but there is an option to print it without the ads if you wanted to share it with the class. Drawing Power offers a more thorough lesson on pirate ship drawing, in three PDF files. You could be the envy of your school.
• Mrs. Jump’s class has some pirate printables. I like the way she uses PIRATE as an acronym for “Prepared, Informed, Ready, and Together Every Day.”

Once you’ve decorated, you might like some pirate information:

• National Geographic’s pirate resources begin with an online map lesson.
• Here are some lesson plans from the fun folks at Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th). Their site is worth exploring, too. You’ll be inspired to make up piratical sayings for your bulletin board: “Charting a Course to a Great Year,” “Shiver Me Timbers, We’re Set For a Great Year,” “Sailing into Learning,” or “Avast, Me Hearties!”
• The North Carolina Maritime Museum has lots of information on the infamous Blackbeard. Middle school and upper elementary students can safely explore the site to learn about pirates and archaeology.
• Virginia’s Mariners Museum has educational packets to download. These are collections of simple word documents giving clear instructions on activities like building a compass and an astrolabe, plus lots of information.
• If you don’t care to download, you can find online instructions for making an astrolabe and  a compass.
• Rebecca Rupp has a collection of pirate resources with some nice science and math links for older students.
• Geography all the Way has a pirate simulation focusing on modern piracy. Use geographic information and tools, and get a nice writing assignment at the same time.

Set up a table of pirate books. Here are some of my favorites:

• Captain Abdul’s Pirate School, Colin McNaughton
• The Giant Rat of Sumatra: or Pirates Galore, Sid Fleischman
• The Great Pirate Activity Book, Deri Robins
• How I Became a Pirate, David Shannon
• The Not-So-Jolly Roger #2 (Time Warp Trio), Jon Scieskza
• Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter, Richard Platt
• Peter Pan , J.M. Barrie. We have lesson plans for Peter Pan.
• Pirateology, Helen Ward
• Pirate School , Cathy Dubowski
• Seadogs: An Epic Ocean Operetta, Lisa Wheeler
• Sheep on a Ship , Nancy Shaw
• The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers & Rogues by George Choundas
• Pirate Pete’s Talk Like a Pirate, Kim Kennedy

Homeschool Share offers a collection of teaching ideas and reproducibles for Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter, an exciting chapter book with lots of historical detail.

Don’t forget the river pirates. River pirates worked up and down the Mississippi, luring travelers onto their steamboats and robbing and killing them, or taking over ships traveling to New Orleans and robbing them. Sometimes they sneakily sank the ships and then came back later to recover the treasure.

It is said that at least one of the islands that disappeared in the New Madrid Earthquake of 1811-12 was the headquarters of a band of river pirates, all of whom perished when the island went under.

• Read here about the basics, and about how modern scholars find information on these pirates.
• Read about Jean Lafitte’s Espionage in Arkansas. Here is an article about Lafitte, for your own background or for older students to read.

Leaving the river pirates and returning to your basic high seas buccaneers, this is a great time to introduce the kids to light opera. The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan is a very accessible example. There are several good recordings and DVDs available, including one with Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Klein which is quite modern and movie-like. Here is a website with the whole libretto, midi files to listen to, and enough background information for a thorough study of Pirates.

Play Pirate Ship to get whole-body movement and direction-following into the mix. This game can include memory-training, too.

Online resources for practicing technology skills while learning about pirates:

• Pirate Annie’s interactive adventure offers reading comprehension and basic mouse and keyboard skills.
• Take a virtual tour of a tall ship and get some practice with zoom and pan functions.
• Time Pirates Adventure is a cool interactive from England. There are Flash and no-Flash versions. There’s lots of history and fun adventure, plus safe opportunities to practice a broad range of computer skills.
• Piece of Eight is an attractive site with lots of information, and it can be fun to explore. Be warned, though, that a lot of the site is under construction, and the navigation is unorthodox, so it can be frustrating as well as fascinating to visit.

For the youngest classes, a fun and educational option for pirate play is the  Playmobil Pirate Ship:

It’ll really float on your water table, or put it on the floor and see it come to life with imagination. The Playmobil Red Corsair gives your students a second set of pirates for more complex games.

For emergent readers, Storylands Pirate Cove Complete Program from Teacher Created is a complete reading program with class sets of both fiction and nonfiction readers, readers theater, center cards, reproducibles, and activities for your interactive whiteboard, all centered around a happy band of pirates.

The main advantage to using a pirate theme? It allows you to shout, “Avast, me hearties!”

Butterfly Classroom Theme

Butterflies are a common symbol of growth and change — a great classroom theme!

There are some ready-made items for your bulletin board:

• Scholastic’s clever 3-D Butterflies! Bulletin Board
• Mini Bulletin Boards- Butterflies & Moths from North Star

You can also make butterflies from circular coffee filters. Have students loosely gather them in the center with a pipe cleaner, using the ends of the pipe cleaner to form antennae. Drop paint onto one side of the filter. Fold the filter in half and push the sides together to form identical blotches of color on both sides of the coffee filter. Add the butterflies to the bulletin board or hang them from the ceiling.

For preschool, just have the kids dip their hands in non-toxic paint and make handprints on paper. Cut them out roughly and pair them up for butterfly wings with a craft stick or clothespin in the middle.

Add some butterfly books to the class library table:

• Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly, by Jane O’Connor
• Monarch Butterfly, by Gail Gibbons, is stuffed with interesting facts.
• Butterfly House, by Eve Bunting, is a touching book.
• Butterfly Battle (The Magic School Bus Chapter Book #16)
• A Butterfly is Patient has particularly beautiful illustrations.
• The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast

Science

• An Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden provides an opportunity to follow butterflies through their entire life cycle, up close and personal. When your butterflies hatch, you can let them go, and order another certificate for next time. Re-use the Butterfly Garden.
• The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies is a Nova DVD that follows monarch butterflies through their complex and unusual lifecycle.
• Introduce metamorphosis to young children with Lifecycle Headbands. Give each student a sentence strip. Have the kids fold it into quarters. Go over the butterfly’s lifecycle and have students illustrate each stage. Staple the strips into headbands and have students put them on. Ask them to show you the larvae, the pupa, the chrysalis, and the butterfly by turning the headbands on their heads to put each stage to the front. Tell students to ask their neighbors for help to make sure that they’ve got it right.

Math

• Butterflies are an excellent example for a study of symmetry. McGraw-Hill has a very simple symmetry lesson plan with a butterfly you can copy.

Music

• Puccini’s Madama Butterfly makes beautiful background music while students work.

Art

• Make butterfly puppets with a copy-color-and -cut reproducible from Scholastic.
• Use MSPaint to make butterflies for a tech and art project.

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

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