Dear Parents,
On Monday we built an ant obstacle course. The ants helped build the obstacle course and stored food for their colony. We sang The Ants Go Marching while marching around and around the course so many times we finally had to cut them off. We also found real ants in the building this week.
On Tuesday we had an insect hunt. We used our plastic insects and hid them in the big room. All the insects were found in locations where real insects might hide.
While some friends drummed with Alex for music, everyone else worked on their butterfly wings. We read From Caterpillar to Butterfly, Butterflies, and Tiny, Perfect Things. We looked at all the different patterns and colors of butterflies in the books before beginning ours. We colored our wings using oil pastels first. Many children made patterns. Butterflies have six legs, three body parts, four wings, but no typical mouth. They eat with a proboscis which is like a straw.
We read The Big Book Of Bugs, Spiders Spin Webs, Be Nice to Spiders, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Bugs For Lunch, Grasshoppers, Dragonflies, and Ladybugs.
We added watercolor to our wings the next day. As we set them out to dry, we remembered that our book told us that real butterflies also have to wait for their wings to dry after emerging from the chrysalis.
On Friday we used our butterfly wings to float around the bigroom. We played music and thought about how the music made us feel and move. We flew slow and gentle at first, but switched to loud and fast, the preference for this breed of butterfly. The butterflies fluttered by quickly and chaotically.
Have a warm weekend,
Therese and Alli