I is for Insect

I've spent several days trying to decide where to start, and finally decided to just dive right in! 

The Froggie Friends (my class of preschoolers) are learning all about the letter I this week, so naturally we needed to make letter I insects!  Searching Pinterest, I found the basic idea here at The2Balqis and then took off with it..

I cut out the letters ahead of time. I thought orange would be a bright, fun, buggy color.   I used a die cut  machine for mine, though these would be very simple to draw and cut out with scissors.  My die cut didn't have the top and bottom bars for the letter I, so we made those with the scraps and allowed the children to glue them on.  This happy accident allowed them to practice manipulating and building the letter shape.  Bonus!

Once the letters were assembled, I helped them draw the insect body patterns with Elmer's glue.  We made some with lines and others with dots.  If you have more time and courage than we did, let the children draw their own patterns with the glue.  The top bar was kept bare to differentiate it as the insect head.

Next the glue designs were ready to be glitterflied. The kids loved shaking the glitter on. I like to place my art into something  like a shallow box or tub or (in this case) a lid to help catch the excess glitter.  This helps eliminate both extra mess and excess waste.  All of that awesome glitter can be added back into the shaker for the next project!

While allowing these glittery designs to set, I prepared other pieces.  I hot-glued small poms to the ends of  a short pipcleaner bent to form a V-shape.  These made adorable antennae!  Other pipecleaners were cut and bent to create  legs for our little insect.  Each bent pipecleaner is one SET of legs. 

I hot-glued these pipe cleaner legs and antennae to the letter I..Warning:  kids are fascinated with hot glue.  Maybe because we tell them it's for adults only.  Maybe because it comes out of a gun...  Whatever the reason, make sure they are out of the room or that it remains completely out of reach. 

Once the hot-glue has cooled and hardened, the kids can add the finishing touches by adding google eyes to the corners of the head segment, and.... tada!  Letter I Insects!