Kristie Christiansen, left, and second-grader Nora Mei Christiansen huddle together for a photo after the Garden Party Mother’s Day program Friday morning at Seymour-Redding Elementary School.
Erika Malone | The Tribune
Seymour-Redding Elementary School was swarming with insects Friday morning.
These insects, however, were second-graders who love to sing, dance and tell jokes for their mothers and grandmothers in honor of Mother’s Day, which is Sunday.
“We wanted to end the school year by showing appreciation for our female role models, and we had a great turnout,” second grade teacher Laura Burbrink said.
The past few weeks, the five second grade classrooms have been learning about insects, including their life cycles, body parts, habitats and enemies, and they are learning about the metamorphosis of a butterfly.
The second grade teachers, Karen Robertson, Angie Rennekamp, Natasha Lewis, Jeanie Schneider and Burbrink, decided to combine their classes to share what the children have been learning about insects and recognize those for Mother’s Day.
In addition, students showcased homemade garden hats they made with their female role model.
These hats were made out of many different materials, including baseball caps, old garden hats and even paper with flowers, bugs (fake, of course) and other gardenlike decorations, attached to their homemade hat.
“The kids did a wonderful job on decorating their hats, and it shows how much creativity these kiddos have,” hybrid teacher Cassie Speer said.
Each class sang a song, read a poem or told an interesting fact about a certain insect, including ladybugs, beetles, butterflies, crickets and fireflies.
Burbrink’s class sang their hearts out while sharing the different body parts of an insect, which includes a head, thorax and abdomen, to the tune of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”
Rennekamp’s class brought out their inner Shakespeare with a poem about fireflies and sharing interesting facts about other insects.
One of the facts included a scientist who timed a snowy tree cricket and found that the insect chirped 90 times per minute. That’s 5,400 times in an hour.
Lewis’ class shared a poem about the majestic ladybug and some interesting facts about the spotted insect, saying that not all ladybugs are red or yellow with black spots but can be nearly any color of the rainbow.
Robertson’s class participated by reciting a cricket poem using little clickers to mimic the sound of a cricket noise.
Schneider’s class brought out the beats as they participated with the other classes in a rap about metamorphosis, anatomy and duties of insects.
Finally, the students closed the program with one last song called “The Bugs Go Marching” as they marched and held up their pointed fingers like antennas.
With the Garden Party program being a swarming success, the students buzzed over to their mothers and grandmothers to wish them a Happy Mother’s Day with paper flowers they made for Day of Caring.
On Friday, the students showed their appreciation for not only the insects and their many duties but for the many female role models who work hard for those they care for.