Classroom lessons

This week has been a busy week.  We had to practice for Chapel every day until our Chapel day on Thursday.  The kids did a FANTASTIC job!  I couldn't be more proud of them!  It was a great lesson for them to also learn how to speak in front of people.  Some who practiced and talked really really fast froze up there- they did warm up after a while and then talked normal!  This was great.  I told them later that they spoke much better and we could understand what they said.  :)  They all spoke so nice into the microphone.  We could hear them. :)  Yeah!

We had another classroom lesson this week with our butterflies.  The kids learned that they have to be very gentle with them- don't shake the table, don't talk to loud around them, don't hit or touch their house.  They also learned how to take care of the butterflies.  Although they never fed them themselves, I was reminded many times that it was time to feed them!  I like how they took it upon themselves to give me reminders. 

We didn't let our butterflies go today.  I want to wait till Monday.  :)  Plus, I allowed my son to bring two of them home for the weekend.  Although we only offically named one in my classroom (Stinker), Landon promptly named his new pals in the car on the way home from school.  They are Fluffy and Wingo.  :)  I love it!  Landon has started to name things more instead of the obvious names like "Yellow Lovey and Blue Lovey"  Lately cars have earned some of the names from the Detroit Tigers.  His "guys" are names from people who have been on Wipeout.  So I was happy that he named the butterflies something other than "orange one and brown one".  I like Fluffy and Wingo.  They will be good companions this weekend for him.  We may release them on Mother's Day if the weather is right.

Butterflies are Here!

Today, my class had the wonderful chance to see a butterfly actually emerge from its chrysalis.  It was an amazing sight to see and watch happen.  It was by chance that we hadn't already left the room for Chapel practice.  I had gone to my desk to get the Chapel items needed for the day and I happened to look over at our butterfly house.  I saw a head poking out of the chrysalis.  I hurried all my kids over to the butterfly house.  We watched this in amazement.  The kids were just in awe of it happening before them.  We had already had 4 butterflies that had emerged over the weekend (of course when none of us were there).  We watched until it opened its wings to dry out more.  One of my kids asked, "How does it start coming out?  What makes the Chrysalis come apart?"  I was about to answer when one of my girls stated, "It uses its beak to come out.  It just peck pecks until the chrysalis opens."   I then gently explained that butterflies do not have beaks, only birds.  I had some of the kids chime in and go "Yeah look at its face, it doesn't have a beak."  The girl gently and nicely replied, "Well it fell off after it came out!  It doesn't need it anymore!"  So needless to say, we will be comparing insects such as butterflies to birds coming up before the school year ends.  We will do a Venn Diagram with it.  It was a good learning experience for them today and me as well.  I saw that I need to go further into the parts of the body for insects (even as they had a whole field trip on this). 

I have only seen one other time butterflies emerge from their chrysalis.  That was several years ago.  We did have 4 born today.  Two others had emerged when we practiced Chapel.  Apparently their names are Landon (after my son) and Mrs. Lindhurst.  They haven't named all the others yet.  How they keep track of which is which when we have eight and soon to be nine butterflies in there, I don't know, but I will go along with it because it makes them happy and lets face it- it is really cute!  We were watching closely the rest of the day to have the two remaining chrysalis' emerge.  I thought that one wasn't going to because it was really dark, almost black in color.   I thought it wasn't making it.  Well, my kids had to go to gym.  Gym is literally about 30 feet from my classroom.  I walked them there, went upstairs to the teaching lounge to get a snack, and then came back down.  Not even gone 10 minutes.  That dark chrysalis was empty with a new butterfly next to it! That little stinker!   It waited until everyone was out of the room!  So, needless to say, that ones name is Stinker.  The kids think it is hilarious.  I told them it is because he is a little stinker for coming out when no one was there and we had been watching and waiting for it! 

I just love this butterfly unit though.  I wish we could keep them all year long and watch the cycles over and over again!  I will be sad when we have to let them go either later this week or next week.  All depends on the weather.  The kids have enjoyed watching them grow as caterpillars, watching me transfer the chrysalis' into the butterfly house, and now having butterflies!  I can't wait for this again next year- and with two classes that will be fun!

Very Hungry Caterpillar

Our caterpillars arrived about a week and a half ago.  It has been fun watching them go from about a half an inch long to being these much bigger creatures.  Over the weekend they all turned into their Chrysallis.  Now we get the joy of watching them and seeing the color changing on their wings.  It amazes me the changes that a caterpillar goes under to become a butterfly.  When I get to heaven one day, that is a question I am going to ask God- how does that happen?  It truly does amaze me!

When we got our caterpillars I decided that we had to pause in our literature unit and bring out The Very Hungry Caterpillar unit.  It was so much fun to do with the kids.  It was a lot of work, but they had fun as I did too.  We are still working on a few things with the unit, but for the most part most of the things are all done.  There are still a few butterflies to be made so the door isn't completely done, but I wanted to share some pictures of what the kids made for our "bulletin board".  (I have all of 2 small bulletin boards in my HUGE classroom, so I made due with making one of my door cubbies my bulletin board.)  I am hoping to be able to figure out how to get my templates onto TPT so that I could sell them, but we will see if I can be that technologically efficent. 

This is the one side of my door "cubby" as I call it.

This is the opposite side of the cubby.  I love all their little caterpillars!

This is my second door... we don't really use this door, so I figured why not have it be used for a project like this.  Of course it has a lot more butteflies and food on it right now.

My door cubby... I tried to use my wood on the side as part of the tree trunk.  Things don't like to stick to that part of the wood otherwise. :)

One of my favorite pieces of fruit.  I thought they did a wonderful job in mixing the colors.  It really looks like a pear!  The fruit was made by painting it first and while the paint was still wet, they put pieces of tissue paper on it too.  We did it all Eric Carle style.  Some of my girls were saying, "I'm Mrs. Eric Carle!"  They couldn't be Eric Carle because he is a boy! 

Another one of my favorites... the watermelon.  They did a WONDERFUL job I thought at this.  After the paint all dried, I glued the black sequins on to make the seeds. :) 

I will post final pictures once I have all their projects up!  Plus I will add the link to TPT if I figure that out (hopefully soon)!