Hello, Friendly Fox Families!
We have had a wonderful week of Entomology fun. We are learning so much about insects, metamorphosis, and life cycles. We have truly focused on butterflies and caterpillars this week, noticing how our class monarch and swallowtail caterpillars are growing and changing. We have talked a lot about the four stages of an insects life cycle: egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis), and imago/adult (butterfly). We even introduced a “Butterfly Ballad” song, which is very fun to sing and reminds us all about metamorphosis! We are noticing so many insects outside!
We created a beautiful “Metamorphosis Mobile” complete with eggs, handmade caterpillars, munched leaves, chrysalises and handmade butterflies. The children are so proud of it! They are also very happy with their Life Cycle wheels that we made this week, also on display. This was a wonderfully fun, hands-on way to remember that life cycles are circles of life! We made lovely unique symmetrical butterflies – we really enjoyed squishing the paint! We made our own caterpillars with real munched leaves, squished some fingerpaints, played as Entomologists in real dirt sensory bins, sand bins, and zen gardens. Together we built dough caterpillars, unifix cube patterned caterpillars together, and lego butterfly habitats and so much more. We read some wonderful butterfly books, as well as some favorite Mo Willems books, as he is our Author of the Month. We also added our “Butterfly Ballad” to our special journals.
We finished off the week with a nice long Nature Collection walk. The children truly enjoyed this, and were so careful to notice small things, especially how if a tree is still holding on to something it isn’t finished with it yet. We talked about how trees drop things when they don’t need them anymore. We brought our treasures back to the classroom and sat down together to make beautiful watercolored nature treasure collages. This project always makes my heart sing!
Next week we will continue studying some of the insects that are very active where we live for a few days. We will have one day to celebrate how much we love Mo Willems, vote for our favorite books and we will write a class letter to him. We will then spend a little time learning about Arachnology, and learning about how spiders are different than insects.
We have been saying “Good Morning” to our picture of Christina every morning, and have been counting down the days until she joins us, which is this Monday the 23rd! The children are getting along beautifully and we are seeing new friendships arise every day. We are truly enjoying this time together!
Thank you for all you do!
Wynne, Nancy, Taulbee, (and on Monday, Christina)
