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!

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Vickie

While we've been learning about insects these past two weeks, my kids have been loving our literacy workshops and math centers. I love having a variety of centers, so my kids are practicing lots of different skills! Not all of my kids do all of these centers either - they do the ones related to the skills they need the most practice with. Here's a quick peek at what we've been working on. {If you click the picture, it will take you to the pack the centers are from...most are from my Spring pack and my friend Deeanna's Going Buggy pack}

Rolling Word Families: The kids spread out pictures, roll the dice, then find a picture in that word family and write the word on their recording page

Caterpillar Vowels: Making caterpillars by matching pictures with the same medial sound

Words That Bug Us: Discriminating between real and non sense words

Matching Words: Matching more difficult words to pictures...they know their is only one picture for each letter of the alphabet, so that helps them :)

CVC Word Match: Not technically insects, but the kids love reading their words and finding the matching pictures

Ladybug Addition: Counting spots and adding them together

Honeybee Subtraction: Writing subtraction equations for what the picture shows

Rolling Numbers: Working on forming our numbers correctly

More or Less: Determining if a number is more or less than another

Ladybug Number Lines: Finding missing numbers on a number line

I forgot to share these pictures yesterday, but last week, we went outside to see if we could catch any bugs. My kids LOVED looking for insects! We only were able to get a few ants, but during recess, our neighbor Mrs. Calloway, caught a hornet for our classes to inspect. The kids loved it!

My kids are so into all things insects and they're eating up everything we're doing! I love this time of year!!

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Vickie

I can't believe how quickly the end of the year is flying by!! I have all kinds of lists with things I/we still need to do and there are only 11 days of school left! Everything is so hectic this time of year, but we've been squeezing in some fun this week when we can learning all about plants.

First, we talked about seeds and brainstormed all the things we could think of that come from seeds...

Then, we planted bean seeds in bags and put them in our little greenhouses {I've done this every year I've taught and originally got the idea from Little Giraffes - love her stuff!}

We read lots of stories about plants and made a little impromptu tree map...

We also talked about the life cycle of a plant and how it grows and made a big organizer together then each student made their own {from Caitlin's awesome Plant unit}...

This afternoon, we talked about the parts of a flower and labeled our big class flower. Then, each kiddo made their own flower diagram with labels...these cute cupcake liners came from Wal-Mart (the cake decorating aisle)...

Just for fun, we made these big flowers to hang from our ceiling. Does anyone else have a space problem? We literally have no where other than the floor for things to dry...

In math, we're working really hard on subtraction. Usually it's super easy for my kids, but this year it's giving us trouble. We've been using seeds to help us! You can get the subtraction page along with others here {Freebie! :) }

We've also been using some of my Spring centers during workshops...

Now I'm off to start getting copies made for our awards day! I'm using Reagan's candy awards  again this year and can't wait for the kids to see them!

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Vickie