Caterpillars, Polliwogs, and Bees, Oh My!

Happy Tuesday! Today's story was titled The Caterpillar and the Polliwog. See if your child can tell you another word for polliwog (tadpole). In the story, a polliwog was very sad that he would not change into something else like the caterpillar. In order to learn how to change into a butterfly, the polliwog watches the caterpillar as she forms a chrysalis and sleeps for a long time until she comes out as a butterfly. At the end of the story, the polliwog feels sad because he is not able to turn into a butterfly, but little does he realize that he was so busy watching the caterpillar turn into a butterfly that he did not notice the changes he was going through. Instead of turning into a butterfly, he turned into a frog! This was a great story to tie what we learned about the frog life cycle in March into our new learning about the butterfly life cycle!

The children visited centers today. Ask your child which center he/she visited.

At the first center, the children created their own caterpillar and put it to sleep in a chrysalis. We will check in a couple of weeks to see whether or not our caterpillars turned into butterflies. Children at this center also counted out one circle for each letter of their last name and added a circle head to create a caterpillar. They practiced creating a color pattern out of the circles. Once the caterpillar was glued together, the children wrote one letter of their last name on each circle and added facial details, as well as antennae.

The second center colored coffee filter butterflies. Then they sprayed the markers with water to see how the colors bleed together. Once dry, we will cut out the butterflies and use them in a book about the life cycle of a butterfly on Thursday.

The third center read some books about ladybugs. One book was a fiction story about a very lazy ladybug. The second book was a non-fiction story about ladybugs that helped us learn some new facts. Then each child made a special ladybug. Inside was a secret number. The children had to count out and glue the correct number of dots on the ladybug's wings to correspond with their secret number. Afterwards, the children had to find a friend or teacher to try to trick. They had a lot of fun trying to find someone to guess their secret number!

During playtime, we continued to work on some special secret projects.

In the afternoon, we celebrated Ms. Debbie's birthday. She is Isaac's nurse that comes to school with him each day. Thank you for the special birthday treat, Ms. Debbie!

At closing circle, we read a non-fiction book about bumblebees. Then we acted out the counting song "Buzzing in the Garden." The children took turns being bees and flowers. Of course, their favorite part was being a bee! :)

We also did the counting jar in both classes.

Audrie also shared a picture with her friends of herself holding a butterfly. She brought in some butterfly books to read to. We will try to fit in some time to read at least one of them this week. Thank you for sharing, Audrie! :)

Have a fantastic evening!