Field Day Fun!

We started the day in the gym where we heard all about Field Day.

We had fun at many different games and stations.

 We sat with friends to watch the hula hoop contest. 

We went to the Kona Ice truck and played on the play structures. 

We loved our cool blue shirts!

Butterfly update!

We finished up our insect life cycle science unit with a few final art creations and with the arrival of our butterflies on Monday! 

On Thursday, we took our butterflies to the playground and let them go free!

Our next learning theme is Zoo Animals! 

*Field Day is next Friday, May 31. We will be going outside to participate in some of the events and will also be taking some breaks inside in our classroom as well. You may wish to put sunscreen on your child at home that morning. We will all have T-shirts to wear from our PTA. The PTA is also providing a hot dog lunch for us! We will take a mid morning break for our morning snack time. 

Our Chrysalises and a State Trooper Visit

Monday was very exciting! All 6 of our caterpillars had shed their skin and formed chrysalises - we were able to move them into a larger butterfly cage so that they would have room to fly when they emerge from the chrysalis stage. Some of the chrysalises were on the lid, and some were on the ground, but we are hoping to have 6 butterflies! We could see that they had eaten a lot of food, and had shed their skins many times. 

On Monday we also had a visit from a Michigan State Trooper, Sgt. Gill. He told us all about the police academy, what police officers do to help people, and how we need to work and learn at school. He brought us some treats, and took us out to sit in his police vehicle! 

We worked all week on our insect life cycle unit and created bees, dragonflies and giant Painted Lady butterflies for our bulletin board. We also wrote about our chrysalises and insects in our journals - we are building our stamina for writing and adding details and labels to our drawings! 

We demonstrated our understanding of the insect life cycle by making these necklaces... EGG, CATERPILLAR (or larva), CHRYSALIS (or pupa), BUTTERFLY (or adult insect). 

Our Caterpillars and Michigan

We continued to watch our caterpillars eat and grow this week. We measure them every day and notice that they have been molting, or shedding their skins. On Friday, we noticed that the first caterpillar was hanging from the top of the jar, in the shape of a letter J. We predicted that he was getting ready to molt once more and become a chrysalis. 
We have also been learning about our state - we know we are nicknamed "The Mitten State" and "The Great Lake State". Have your child tell you why! We read about robins, our state bird. 

 

We also learned that our state fish is the Brook Trout and our state flower is the Apple Blossom. 

In our social skills lessons this week, we have continued to explore small, medium and large sized problems. We also talked about "expected" and "unexpected" behaviors and "the group plan". In our classroom, we review what the "group plan" is when we come up for instruction, when we begin Center Time or when we go to recess. The "group plan" helps us know what everyone is expected to do. A big reaction or tantrum would be an example of an "unexpected behavior". Unexpected behaviors make others feel uncomfortable and do not solve the problem. 

I hope all of the mothers and grandmothers in our families have a wonderful Mother's Day! You are all very special ladies to your children/grandchildren! 

Insects

We continued with some insect themed Eric Carle books, including "The Very Lonely Firefly", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "The Grouchy Ladybug" to begin our insect life cycle science unit. We made some fireflies for our hallway board and wrote about some of our firefly learning.

We used balloons to paint these big caterpillars. We learned that the job of a caterpillar is to eat. 

In "The Grouchy Ladybug", we saw that using mean words did not work for the grouchy ladybug...it did not get her what she wanted. We also learned that ladybugs eat aphids - aphids eat plants, so ladybugs are helpful insects. 

We were pretty excited when this box arrived for us!

We will be observing our 6 caterpillars as they eat and grow next week and writing about them in our journals. We will also do some Michigan Week themed activities to help us learn about our state. 

Our Fantastic Field Trip!!!

We had a wonderful field trip to the WL Outdoor Education Center today. We learned about spiders and insects, helped plant some new trees and enjoyed eating lunch together! We appreciate the support of the WL Foundation for Excellence who helped fund part of our trip through their mini-grant program. 

We learned about how spiders make webs and catch insects by playing some fun spider games. 

We learned that insects have 3 body parts - we put insect puzzles together to help us see the 3 parts. 

There were many things for us to look at and investigate in the insect room. 

We tried out some special glasses to experience the compound eyes that insects have. 

 We went outside to look for spider webs and egg sacks, and then we helped plant some new trees!

The Outdoor Education Center was really cool - we loved exploring inside and outside today!