We Let our Butterflies Go!

 Today we let our five butterflies go free near a lilac bush. The were so beautiful and so much fun to watch! Many of us were very sad to say goodbye to them, but we know that they were happy to be out in the big world!  Maybe our butterflies will lay some eggs and we'll see some new caterpillars.

May excitement!

 

This is the chapter book we are reading! Not only is Charlotte's Web  my favorite book, it is also a huge benchmark for our class. We could not have read this book in the fall, but now all of our students are able to sit, listen, attend and think about the words I am reading out loud to them. We are able to discuss the setting and character traits of the people and animals in this book. It is a wonderful story about friendship, and because we have worked so hard on identifying feelings and emotions this year, we are able to talk about how Wilber, the pig, feels at different times in the story. For example, we knew that Wilber felt lonely when he didn't have a friend, and excited when he heard that Charlotte would be his friend. Wilber felt disgusted when he learned that his new friend ate flies! Reading a chapter book is a great way to build listening and attending stamina. I'm proud that we are able to enjoy this book together now!

We have continued to work on our insect unit and have learned a new song that helps us name all of the parts of an insect:  head, thorax, abdomen, six legs, compound eyes, antenna and some wings.



Today we began using a new daily note - I hope that you will find the information on it helpful. Next week, students will fill in their own date and name.

The big excitement today was that our butterflies began to emerge from their chrysalids! The first one came while we were unloading the buses. We watched all day long, but only one came out today...maybe tomorrow the rest will be flying around too!

Phyllis laid an egg at Group!

Farmer Schmidt came today with her chicken and her duck. We learned all about girl and boy chickens and ducks and we were able to see their feet and feathers up close! We learned that birds have feathers and lay eggs and many birds can fly.  Farmer Schmidt also talked with us about butterflies and moths and brought us a moth cocoon for our classroom. Now we have chrysalids and a cocoon to observe! She told us some stories and had us all do the chicken dance. The children were wonderful - they were able to sit, listen and participate for the entire program. The most amazing thing of all was what happened in the chicken cage - Phyllis loved our class so much that she laid an egg! It was a beautiful white egg that was still warm!

Chrysalids!

We arrived to school to find that our 5 caterpillars had been replaced with 5 chrysalids! This meant that we needed to remove them from the small jar they had lived in when they were caterpillars. We moved them into a large and roomy case so that they will have plenty of room to fly around when they become butterflies. We could see the old skins that the caterpillars had grown out of.  We talked about what it might feel like to be in a chrysalid for about 10 days, and 3 of our students volunteered to become chrysalids to try it out! We worked as teams to wrap them up - it was a lot of fun! We read a book called Waiting for Wings which is what we need to do now... we need to wait and watch for our butterflies too.

On Wednesday morning Farmer Schmidt will be here with some ducks and chickens - we always love her visits!

Being a problem solver

These are our caterpillars after eating all week long - they are over one inch long now, and beginning to crawl up to the top of the cup they are in. This is a sign that they are getting ready to become chrysalids.

This week we had a great lesson/discussion about friends and empathy for others. We practiced looking at another child's face and thinking about how they might be feeling. We are getting really good at being problem solvers, so we tried to think of different ways we can react/interact with our classmates. We also talked about some of the ways "friendly"people look and sound and what they do that makes people like them. The class is very interested in this topic right now -we often review our "Model Me Kids" DVDs to show us exactly what to do around other children.

Our Caterpillars Are Here!

Our caterpillars have arrived and we sure are excited to meet them! There are five of them, and right now they are busy eating and crawling. We know that they came from an egg and that when they get big enough, they'll form chrsalids (the pupa stage). Inside of the chrysalids, the butterflies will grow and develop. We know that our caterpillars have been eating because they have chewed up some of the food on the bottom of their container, and they have already molted, or shed their skins, once to accommodate their growing size. We read,"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and we've begun to make our own caterpillar books, just like Eric Carle!

Problem solving and Bugs!

This week, our Skills for Learning lessons have focused on problem solving. We are practicing stopping, calming down and breathing, and then trying to think of possible solutions to a problem. I have noticed that many of the children in our program have difficulty coming up with possible solutions, and tend to fall back on less successful behaviors or reactions. We will continue to work on and practice this skill throughout the rest of the spring with role plays, stories, and a lot of discussion! I hope that some of you are seeing your children practice/try out these things at home too - when you do, be sure to praise and reinforce your child's attempts. Remember that if your child is able to "teach" a coping skill to you and/or try it outside of our classroom, he/she is beginning to generalize that skill to real world situations! Although none of us likes to see our children experience frustration or strong upsets, please try to look at these things as opportunities for practicing the coping skills we have worked so hard to learn. Rather than feeling upset that a problem occurred, celebrate when an attempt to problem solve it takes place. The problems children may encounter will not go away, but with practice, your child can develop the skills that will allow him/her to be much more resilient.

We have begun to work on our Insect Life Cycle unit. We've learned that an insect has three body parts (head, thorax and abdomen) and six legs. This week we read about ladybugs (actually beetles!) and wrote about ladybug facts. Here are some of the things the kids wrote about ladybugs: they are oviparous, they eat 50 aphids a day, they have hard outer wings to protect their fragile flying wings, they are insects, they lay eggs, and they smell with their antenna. We've also introduced the words egg, larva, pupa and adult. These words will be heard again next week when we talk about butterflies. We expect our caterpillars to be in school next week! They have been traveling in the mail this week and we are anxious to meet them!

We have also been working on some of the things we'll be sharing with you on May 31st. Our End of the Year Feelings Celebration will be held at 2:00 and all family and friends are welcome to join us. We hope you can come!