Buckeye Class:
This month was all about bugs, flowers, and gardening. Our April showers brought us beautiful May flowers all around our school. In the beginning of the month, we finished up learning about butterflies, and moved on to other insects, their importance to us and the environment, and their role in the plant world. We still have our caterpillars in our classroom and it has been a wonderful learning opportunity to witness their metamorphosis. Each morning the children come in curious to see if a butterfly has hatched. The excitement was high when this finally started happening!
The children learned some interesting facts about ladybugs and many created ladybug life-cycles made out of painted paper plates. They learned about the parts of an ant and how ants work together in a colony. Your child might be able to sing about the parts of an ant/insect to the tune of “head, shoulders, knees, and toes”. It goes ¨Head (Point to head.) Thorax (Point to chest.) Abdomen – abdomen! (Point to stomach.) Head, thorax, abdomen – abdomen! And eyes (Point to eyes.) And mouth (Point to mouth.) And antennae, two (Stick 2 fingers up.) Six legs (Wiggle 3 fingers on each hand.) And there’s an insect for you!”
Besides insects the children learned about the life-cycle of a bean and they planted their own bean seeds to take home. We looked in-depth at flowers before we dove into the amazing world of bees. Bees communicate with one another through a “waggle dance”, and the children enjoyed dancing their own waggle dance with “freeze movements”. Highlight of our learning about bees was probably the “Cheeto Pollen Experiment”. During circle time children were given a paper flower and bee. The child’s fingers became the bee’s legs and each child was given a Cheeto to place in the middle of their flower. Their bees would fly to another child’s flower where the legs would touch the pollen (Cheeto), and from there to another flower. The pollen stuck to the bee’s legs (the child’s fingers) and would leave a residue on the paper flowers. This fun experiment showed the children how bees are pollinators and move pollen between flowers. Of course, it was nearly impossible to prevent the children from eating a Cheeto and at the end they were each given one fresh Cheeto to eat (if they chose to).
It has been wonderful to see the children so engaged in our spring units. They clearly enjoy learning about nature and our natural world, and they love helping out in our vegetable garden! We continued the message that was emphasized in April, especially around Earth Day, that we need to take care of nature and should be kind to all creatures that we share our planet with.
“When Children come in contact with Nature, they reveal their Strength” ~Maria Montessori
Hemlock Building:
A warm welcome to all of you. We cannot believe that we’re nearing the end of the school year. April showers bring May flowers as we can see flowers everywhere. Each one of the children has bloomed like a flower in our classroom. We teachers enjoy their beauty and fragrance.
May month has been dedicated to butterflies, seeds, flowers, and pollination. Children learned the parts of the butterfly, a seed, and flowers, and enjoyed making books. They could see the interconnection between them. Children watched the life cycle of a butterfly. We had live caterpillars, which were kept in our classroom. Children could see the progression of a caterpillar to a butterfly with their own eyes. They were happy to plant seeds in our garden, water them and enjoy eating the lettuce leaves.
Children also learned safety methods for summer activities. They learned both land and water safety protocols. Science experiments were a major hit, such as why things look different inside the water, why apples float, where is the equilibrium in boiled and raw egg, why the straight stick takes little bend inside the water. Children enjoyed doing yoga poses. Bread cutting, and peanut crushing food works are major hits as usual. They calm their bodies by doing Zen Garden work. We look forward to our class picnic at St. Edward Park.
We enjoyed singing “Each of us a flower, and Ladybug” songs. We celebrated Cat (6 years), Kerris (5 years), and Billy (5 years) birthdays. Happy birthday to them.
“The greatest gift we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of freedom. And development is a series of rebirths.” ——Dr. Maria Montessori.