It's Been A While

Anyone out there?? Who knew 2 weeks could fly by so quickly?!? Who knew a 17 month old could get hand, foot, and mouth, cut two bottom teeth, miss Easter Sunday festivities, get a horrible cold, cut two top teeth, and have wretched allergies all in 2 weeks? Well, me either, but such is life lately. To top it off, we started our fabulous week of standardized testing this week {and I won't get on a soapbox about testing 5 and 6 years olds...another post, another time ;) }. Back to that cutie 17 month old that has had a rough go of it...here's a picture from this past Sunday when we had a "do-over" of Easter.

I know I'm a little biased, but could she get any cuter??
While time has been flying by, we wrapped up our insect study with butterflies. My kids were just a little obsessed since we had these in our classroom. Every morning they would immediately go over to see if all the caterpillars had made their chrysalis!

When we first began our study of butterflies, we of course learned about their life cycle. We did a little paper/pencil activity, but having the caterpillar cups in our classroom where the kids could see the life cycle actually happening really made a huge difference!

After reading some informational stories about butterflies, we charted what we learned and the kids wrote about their learning. We used watercolors to paint butterflies that we attached to our writing.

We also read one of my favorite stories, Charlie the Caterpillar. It's such a sweet story about the meaning of a true friend and also perfect to discuss how a character can change throughout a story.

Probably my most favorite activity while we study butterflies is making these caterpillar puppets to go along with the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We read the story, then sequence it using pictures from my sequencing pack. Then, we use paper plates that I've cut the middle out of to glue the pieces that the caterpillar ate each day. We also write the day of the week on the back of the plates to help us in our retelling. The puppets are tube socks that I dyed green and hot glued eyes to. After we make the plates, I let the kids get in partners to retell the story. They begged to do it over and over!

My friend Deeanna created this project and it is a favorite of everyone! You have to do it if you haven't taught insects yet! It had my kids so excited about retelling a story! {Click here to see Deeanna's pack}
To celebrate our learning of butterflies, a sweet mom sent us some butterfly bubbles. The kids had a blast with them!

Last Friday, most of our butterflies had emerged, so we released them, not wanting to keep them caged for the weekend. When we came back today, the rest of the butterflies had come out of their chrysalids! It's always so funny to release them...the kids are excited and sad all at the same time! This last picture might be one of my favorites from all year...what learning is all about!

This week we're moving on to plants. I'm hoping to make things as fun as possible, since we're worn out by the time we get finished testing each morning!
Here's to a great week!