Our butterflies are here!

Our first butterfly emerged from her chrysalis on Monday at lunchtime! Her wings were crumpled looking and wet. For a long time, the butterfly sat with her wings folded. She needed to dry them off before she could try flying. 

On Tuesday, we went into the computer lab to complete our I-Ready assessment. We worked very hard and gave it our best effort!

When we returned from lunch on Tuesday, we had a second butterfly! We added a piece of watermelon to the environment and some fresh lilacs. Soon we saw them flying all around their cage!  

On Thursday, we took all three butterflies outside to the playground to set them free. We let them out of the cage near a lilac tree - and they flew right over to it!

On Friday we joined all of the classrooms at Loon Lake to create a garden stone for our school to celebrate our 50th anniversary. We made a butterfly themed stone!

To finish up our insect life cycle unit we made some edible art! 

Ask your child to tell you about this!!!

Next week we begin our dinosaur unit! 

Watching our chrysalids...waiting for butterflies!

On Monday morning we moved our three chrysalids into a larger home so that our "butterflies to be" will have room to fly when they come out of the chrysalids. 

On Friday we added some orange slices and flowers to the cage, just in case our chrysalids open up over the weekend. 

We learned about a few more insects this week - here are our busy ants!

And just look at our awesome butterfly art!

Our social skills lessons included discussions about calming down when we feel angry. Deep breathing helps lower blood pressure and heart rate so we really focused on slow belly breathing when we practiced.
We also talked about the feeling of jealousy and how we can use positive self-talk to calm down. This strategy is important because it engages the thinking part of the brain - and unlike negative self-talk, it helps to calm down strong feelings. 
I wanted to wish all of the mothers a very happy and well deserved Mother's Day! You all do a wonderful job and your children all love you very much! (They tell us!!) I hope your feel surrounded by love this Mother's Day! 

Our growing caterpillars...

We were so immersed in science this week! We are becoming real insect experts, and we love watching the changes in our caterpillars each day. Although there were 5 caterpillars, only 3 of them have grown and seem to be thriving. On day 1 they were 1/2" long and on day 8 the biggest one was 2" long. We could tell that they were eating because their food was all churned up. We also knew that they had molted because we could see their furry little skins on the bottom of the jar. On Friday, the biggest caterpillar hung from the ceiling in the shape of a J...we knew that meant he was ready to shed his skin one last time. Sure enough, by lunchtime he was a chrysalis!

While we were waiting for our caterpillars to eat and grow and change into chrysalids, we had time to investigate ladybugs and fireflies. Our writing reflects some of our learning. We learned that ladybugs are helpful insects, and fireflies produce their own light (bioluminescence) to communicate with. 

Here is how we displayed our ladybug art in the hallway!

We have been reviewing all of our coping skills, and really working hard to use them when we feel disappointed or frustrated. It is hard work, but every day I see progress! We are also working on feedback. Being able to listen to information about what we are doing well and about what we might want to do differently is important if we want to help children make positive change. I model many "glitches" or mistakes that I make so that the children can offer ideas about coping skills I can use. When I make a mistake, I also name my feeling...you can try doing this at home too. So often our students believe that other people, and especially adults, never make mistakes or encounter "glitches". They need to see that we do, and we want them to watch how we handle it. We also need to restrict the urge to "fix" everything for children - instead, look at little problems as opportunities to practice using those coping skills. If we solve everything, kids are deprived of those great, real life chances to learn and grow and manage strong emotions. 

We made these giant butterflies on Friday. We used balls in a box to paint the wings, and then added the white spots. These look great flying around our classroom! 

Insects...

We began our insect unit by reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". We created caterpillars of our own by painting with balloons! We also enjoyed a snack of different fruits - just like the caterpillar ate in the book! It was yummy!

On Tuesday we read a wonderful story called "Waiting for Wings". We looked carefully at the plants and flowers that attract butterflies, and painted some gardens, using a little scrub brush to add the paint. We created the butterflies the next day, and added them to our gardens. Don't they look fantastic!

We created 3 D insect life cycle projects too!

We also have learned that all insects have 6 legs and 3 body parts...the head, thorax and abdomen. We drew diagrams in our journal and labeled the insect body parts. 

Our caterpillars finally arrive on Thursday! We were excited to open the box and look at them. We are documenting their growth and activity in a special journal. 

We had time to learn about one more insect this week...we learned that bees are helpful because they help pollinate plants and they make honey. 

We started out with some rain music on Monday morning. Miss Marlowe brought a rainstick and big drum so we could make rainstorm music - we loved the sounds these instruments made!

We continued learning more about oviparous animals. We learned that octopuses lay their eggs in strings inside of ocean caves. We watched a video and wrote about it in our journals.

We talked about frustration in our social skills lessons this week. Frustration is a yellow zone feeling, and our body cues can help remind us to use a coping skill. Frustration is a strong feeling, and it can be hard to think clearly - we feel uncomfortable. Coping skills can help us feel better and get back in the green zone. We identified some of the times we might feel frustrated at school and at home. Many children named "not getting what they want" and "doing hard work" as triggers for their frustration. 

We wanted to celebrate the spring like weather today, so we ended our oviparous animal study by learning about robins, our state bird. Next week, we will begin a big science unit all about insects! 

April Showers and Oviparous Animals!

We worked together to create this April bulletin board for the hallway! We practiced reading the poem together to find the rhyming words.

We began a science unit about oviparous animals - ask your child to tell you what that word means (egg laying) and have him/her name some oviparous animals. We have been reading many interesting books about oviparous animals and wrote about some in our journals. 

We read some stories about ducks, and painted some for our room. 

In our social skills lessons we talked about strong feelings like disappointment and frustration. We discussed how our bodies feel uncomfortable when we have these feelings and made a chart that shows some of the physical feelings we might experience. Learning to identify body cues can help children know when it is time to calm down... we practiced using a "stop" signal to interrupt the escalation of emotion, and then named the feeling. 

Our individual and group pictures for Picture Day were first thing in the morning. We think we looked pretty good for our pictures. Here we are waiting for our turns...