Friday, April 25, 2014

Mr. Fast

Well, the time has come to let our precious butterfly go!  A few days ago, "Mr. Fast" popped out of the cocoon and started flying around the butterfly cage!  The students were so, so excited to watch the whole life cycle occur.  We fed Mr. Fast sugar water and some fruit for a few days while he strengthened his wings.  Finally, today we let him go in the butterfly garden.  Here are a few pictures of Mr. Fast before he flew away!
 



We have a caterpillar, named "Mr. Slow", who still hasn't gotten into his cocoon yet.  (Hence the name) :) I guess we will see about Mr. Slow after the weekend! 
Thanks for reading!
 
<3, Ms. W


Thursday, April 24, 2014

How to Catch a Star

Today we read the story "How to Catch a Star" by Oliver Jeffers.  The students loved this story!
 
 
After the story, my students wrote about how they would catch a star.  We are working on remembering that a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with some kind of punctuation mark. In this case... a period. 
 
 
 Here are a few examples of the stories the students created!
Kasey's story

Dakota's story
 
We hope to fill the bulletin board with more creative writing stories!
 
<3, Ms. W
 


Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Earth Day!

Yesterday for Earth Day, we did quite a few activities in the classroom and around the school.  We made "Garbage Monsters", watched an Earth Day video, read "Bisuit's Earth Day Celebration".  Our writing topic was "My Earth Day Promise". 

 
In the afternoon, we did a tour of our schools garden.  In the garden, we are growing carrots, brocolli, green beans and corn.  We got to really explore the growing plants.
 


Broccoli
Corn

 
Carrots

It was a very exciting day!  The students learned a lot about taking care of the Earth.  When they left at the end of the day, we ended with "Earth Day is Everyday!"
 
<3, Ms. W

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Caterpillars and butterflies

During our springtime unit, we have been learning a lot about the life cycle of a butterfly. I decided to order live caterpillars from www.insectlore.com. The students are able to see the caterpillars eating and growing and changing! It is very exciting. 

                                         

                                         

One of our caterpillars has already made his chrysalis.


                                         

                                          

The first cocoon should pop open in about a week!  

Monday, April 14, 2014

Spring is in the air!

Hooray for Spring! I am so excited to start this blog, and what better way than by "SPRING"-ing into action!  Today my class talked all about plants and flowers. We did a center rotation craft on the parts of a flower.


At lunch, I had the students save their milk cartons, so we could put the soil in them.  It is a really great way to recycle things in the school.  The plants also grow amazing in them!  I cleaned out each milk carton and prepared them for the afternoon.





In the first container, we planted Marigold seeds.  In the second, we planted Sweet Basil.  All of the students are very excited to see our seeds grow!  Stay tuned for more posts about our growing plants!


<3, Ms. W