What a lovely gift this warm weather has been! We have enjoyed extending our Entomology unit into this week with all the opportunities to see real insects in action outdoors. We have been closely watching our three monarch chrysalises, and were able to release one yesterday. We sang Happy Birthday to it and then sang our Garden Children song when we released it. We are still hoping for two or three swallowtail chrysalises to form, and are watching those caterpillars munch their parsley. We have been finding real insects on the playground, and enjoying watching the dragonflies and butterflies migrate over our meadow!
We had dragonfly day on Monday and learned lots of interesting things, including that they have been around since before the dinosaurs! We got to look up close at a real dragonfly thanks to a donation by a family. We made beautiful stained glass dragonflies for our windows. We had ladybug day on Tuesday and played a fun ladybug dice rolling/spot counting game and made fun spotted ladybugs with flapping wings. We had bee day on Wednesday and learned lots of interesting things about them, including practicing the waggle dance that honeybees do to communicate with one another and making our own beehives and bees. We also were able to attain a wonderful donation of a solitary bee habitat from the Sustainable Blacksburg organization which we will place outside and watch for bees to take up residence! Thursday was Mo Willems day! He has been our author of the month, so we have read many of his wonderful books. We voted on our favorite books, and we had lots of great reasons why we love them! We made cards for him and we will send a letter to him and hope that he writes back to us! We also made our own pigeons to put in our giant bus! Friday was Arachnology day because we know that spiders *are not* insects! We discussed many differences between spiders and insects, and we even got a chance to try on thick eyeglasses to notice what it might be like to be a spider – they may have a lot of eyes, but they can’t see very well! We learned that they smell through their legs! We played with some spiders and made beautiful watercolor webs and added a special spider rhyme to our special journals. You can always take a look at these with your child when you visit. We have continued to sing our special butterfly songs this week and we are learning the sign language to go along with them – the children are loving this! We’ve had fun with all of these activities and so much more.
Next week will have Ornithology week and we have lots of fun bird activities planned. We are hoping for a visit from an Ornithologist!
Thank you for sharing your wonderful children with us!Wynne, Nancy and Christina
Wisdom begins with wonder
