Baby animals and smoothies!

Today we started our unit on baby animals. We listed animal names and the name of the baby animal. We came up with elephant-calf, lion-cub, jaguar-cub, dog-puppy, cat-kitten, and butterfly-caterpillar!!

Speaking of caterpillars ours have nearly doubled in size since last week. They are busy eating and growing, half the food on the bottom of the cup is gone. We're waiting for them to climb to the top of the cup and form j's before they spin their chrysalis.

Muffin had a wonderful week-end with Hanna, our star of the week. We heard about the fun Muffin had up her cabin. Hanna also shared pictures with the class. We learned that Hanna has a horse and she loves to ride!!

As part of "star of the week" Hanna brought in her dad as a special visitor today. We helped him make delicious smoothies. We put in apples, bananas, mangos, soy milk and ice. Then we plugged our ears when he turned on the vitamix, it was so loud!! We also had turkey and cheese sandwiches on croissants, yum! Thanks so much to the Egelseers for helping to make our day so special!!

We heard the story Make Way for Ducklings and we made a mother duck and her baby as our art project today. We also learned the song 5 Little Ducks. It was a great way to spend a rainy Tuesday morning!

Caterpillars and Butterflies

Todays was so much fun! We read The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and then acted it out. We talked about the life cycle of a butterfly and then drew a diagram of it. (Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly). Then we watched a video of caterpillars turning into butterflies. (On you tube if you type in caterpillar turning into butterfly a whole bunch of good videos come up, we only had time for one but I bet your kids would love to watch a few more at home!).

Finally, we looked at our own real live caterpillars that Mrs. Gould brought in. We have 5 very tiny caterpillars right now that need to eat and eat and then turn into chrysalis'. Then they should become butterflies. We set up a butterfly garden in school to watch as this happens. Everyone was so excited to see the real caterpillars!!

It was so nice to see the sun so we went outside and blew bubbles. We had a lot of fun chasing the bubbles and trying to pop them! For snack we had celery, apples and raisins that we turned into a butterfly! We had a graham cracker to go with it. We had lots and lots of fun looking through books after snack today. We read with one another for almost 15 minutes!

We started making butterfly placemats today. We painted a sheet of paper with water and added colors and watched them bleed together. We also cut out 3 butterflies and decorated them. Tomorrow we're going to put it all together and then get it laminated so we can use it as a spring placemat!

Weather

It was so good to see everyone again after spring break. On Tuesday we talked about what weather is. The rain outside helped us as we listed different types of weather. This is what we came up with.

Weather can be different. Somettimes it is windy(Hanna). Sometimes it is snowy(Helena). Sometimes it is rainy(Duncan) and sometimes it is sunny(Liam). Sometimes it is cloudy(Gavin) and sometimes there are rainbows! (Wadie)

We also had lots of fun painting and mixing colors on the back of a muffin tin and then making circle prints! These are hanging up in our classroom!

We talked about the water cycle on Wednesday. Mrs. Bulgerin brought in stick puppets that helped explain. There were clouds, sun, raindrops and dirt. The kids heard the book Big Sara's Little Boots, which was a story about a little girl who loved to splash in puddles with her favorite boots! Then we made a class terrarium to help us see how the water cycle works! For art we made a thunderstorm with paint and glitter glue!

Thursday we talked about wind. We talked about how you can't see the wind but you can feel it and see it move other things. Each child got a straw to blow through to see if they could move cotton balls and balls of tin foil as well as blocks, legos, and other things. Ask your child what they could move and what they couldn't move. We turned on a fan to feel the air moving too!

We heard a big book by Pat Hutchins called The Wind Blew. We made wind socks for art.

All week we're also busy working on puzzles, learning to share and get along, singing, moving to music, playing games (this week we played a movement game called "Where is the Bristle Block" and each child had a turn to hide the block while the rest of us tried to find it). Mrs. Jenkins came in on Thursday and we played hand bells and learned another song. We're beginning to get ready for our spring sing which will be held in May!