Adios Butterflies!

 Today all five of our butterflies emerged from their chrysalis'.  We decided that we should let them go today so they can fly around and be free outside like they are meant to be.  

We noticed that when the butterflies close their wings, they are hard to see in the grass.  We talked about how this keeps them safe from predators.  When they open their wings they are much easier to see and they are beautiful!

Can you spot the butterfly in this picture???

This little one got pretty lucky!  The other kids ran off to play, but she wanted to stay and watch the butterflies a little longer.  As she was watching them one flew onto my hand.  She was standing and watching so nicely, that I carefully helped the butterfly onto her hand.  She was VERY excited!

Here is a short video of one of our butterfly friends!

BUTTERFLIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 This morning I was sitting at my desk and I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye and our chrysalis that fell turned into a butterfly.  Shortly after lunch, another butterfly emerged from their chrysalis.  We still have three more to go! 

This afternoon we had a little fun with double dice for math.  We used them to practice addition and graph sums!

Our bean and pea plants continue to do well! They are growing so tall!!!  As you can see in the window, the one sprout house we have left is also doing well!!

We are so excited to come back tomorrow and see how many butterflies have emerged!

More Plant and Butterfly Science!!!

 Today we got to do Art in our classroom which was a lot of fun!  We started celebrating Earth Day a little early and made torn paper planet Earth's.  It was hard work, but they persevered and their Earth's turned out adorable!

The kids were super excited this morning because our caterpillars are now all chrysalis'.  Four of them are attached to the white disk and one of them is on the floor of the cage next to the net so it can climb the net to dry it's wings if it becomes a butterfly.  We talked today about how some of them might not turn into a butterfly and that is okay. 

Our bean and pea plants are doing great!

All four seeds have sprouted! We will keep watching to see how they grow and change over the next few weeks. 

They were super excited to see how colorful our roses and celery were this morning! 

We finished our observation logs from yesterday!

We even got to cut apart the purple celery and see how the celery carried the water to the celery leaves. 

Our sprout houses are doing great!  Those will come home tomorrow!

Plants, and Caterpilars and Flowers... Oh My!

 Good news!  All of our sprout houses have started to sprout.  Some of them have big roots and some of them are just starting to sprout! 

This morning we took white roses and celery and put them into colored water.  We want to see if they will drink the colored water and what that will do to the plants. 

After we put them in the water we learned about the different parts of a plant. 

The kids went to music and when came back from music, we were surprised to see that you could already tell that the celery had drank up some colored water!

We continued our daily routine and by the end of the day we were so excited to see how colorful our plants already were!

We can't wait to see them tomorrow!  Our caterpillars formed their J's and one of them fell, but it is looking like it may be okay.  I believe it formed it's chrysalis today!  

Our bean and pea plants also have grown so nicely!

SPROUTS & SPROUT HOUSES!!

Today when we came in we saw that our pea seeds are starting to change!  Our bean seeds are still hanging in there!

We made sprout houses to tape to the windows with bean and pea seeds today as well! We are excited to see if they will sprout even without soil! 

Our caterpillars are getting bigger and bigger! I forgot to take a picture of them today!  I will make sure to get one tomorrow though!  It is so fun hearing how excited the kids are getting everyday about science! 

Life Cycles

 With spring comes a fun and exciting Science unit it kindergarten!  We will spend the next couple of weeks learning about the life cycle of plants and animals.  In class we will be observe caterpillars as they transform through the stages of caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly.  We will release them once they turn into butterflies.  We will also be observing pea and bean plants as they grow.  We will compare and contrast them.  They are planted in a clear container so we will be able to observe how the seeds change and the roots as well. 

Day One

On Day One we observed the caterpillars and noticed some webbing at the bottom of the container. This is what caterpillars do in nature to protect themselves from predators and weather.  We also talked about the butterfly's life cycle and used some pretty cool magnets to display it on our board.  We are all very excited to watch our caterpillars grow!

    

We planted two bean seeds and two pea seeds today.  We are looking forward to watching these grow as well.  Today we learned that plants need sun, soil, water, and air to grow. 

Day 2

Today we learned about the life cycle of a plant.  We also observed our seeds from yesterday and noted no changes.  We watered the seeds and will check again tomorrow!

Today we observed our caterpillars some more.  The students noticed that they appeared to be a little more active today and they have made some more webbing.  The students also noticed that there are a lot of little brown specs in the jar.  That is their poop.  They thought that was pretty funny. 

I can project the caterpillars onto the whiteboard so they can get a nice big look at what they are doing!  

We look forward to sharing more of our butterfly and plant journey with you!