Overview:
Grade: Kindergarten
Time: 45 minutes
The student will be able to name the basic body parts of an insect.

Purpose:
The students will learn the name of basic body parts of an insect.
TEKS: Systems (6) System parts- organisms and Objects (a) sort organisms and objects into groups. (c)record observations about animal parts.

Materials:
You will need a variety of plastic insects. A teacher created skillsheet that has insect parts on it, so students can cut and paste and create their own insect.

Getting Ready:
You will need to know the names of the body parts of an insect.

Motivate:
Sing the song head, shoulders, knees and toes.

Activity:
Tell students that insects have body parts just like we do. Hold up a plastic insect and point out the body parts. Tell the students that insects have three separate body parts: a head, a middle part called a thorax, and an end part called an abdomen. Say that almost all insects have six legs that are connected to the thorax. They have two antennae on their head and some insects have wings. You can also tell students insects have no bones, they just have a hard covering on the outside of their body ca lled an exoskeleton. After this, have students come up and use their bodies to build an insect. For example, let one person be the head and one be the thorax and so on. Keep building insects until everyone has had a chance to be a body part. After this pa ss out some plastic insects. Then review all the body parts and their names letting students point to the correct part as you name it. On a dry erase board draw an insect and point to a part and have the students find the part on their insect. Then label it.

Explanation:
Tell the students each part of their body plays an important part of their daily life. Just like our parts do. Ask the students some questions like what might happen if they lost one leg or an antennae? What would they do and could they survive?

Going Further:
You could extend this activity by comparing insects body parts to our body parts or to other animals body parts. You could talk about the functions of each body part.

Closure:
Review all of the body parts. Then let students turn to the person next to them and tell each other the names of the body parts on their plastic insect.

Evaluation:
Let the students do a cut and paste skill-sheet putting the body parts of an insect together in the correct place. Then as they finish they can come to you and tell you the name of each part.

Connections:
TEKS Number, Operations Quantitative
Reasoning Number (1)quantities

For math the students can play a store bought game called Cootie. In this game the students spin a spinner and add the correct body parts to an insect. For example, they could land on a picture of two legs and they would have to count out two le gs. The first one to build a complete insect is the winner.

Part of this activity was adapted from a Macmillan Early Science Activity.

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