Garden Update

It has been few months since we planted our little garden. It was upgraded in the beginning of June to a bigger size garden thanks to our wonderful parents! Children patiently watched the butterfly eggs, they loved checking on the caterpillars and watch them grow. One of my favorite caterpillar activities was comparing and predicting what types of caterpillars we have and how will the butterfly look like.

Children compared our caterpillars from the garden to the caterpillars in a book to figure out their names and to see what kind of butterflies the caterpillars will turn into in couple of weeks.

                                         

Children's predictions:

When the caterpillars were big enough we brought one into the classroom. Children checked on the caterpillar daily, but unfortunately the caterpillar made the chrysalis during the kids' nap time, and we all missed the transformation. 

Invitation to Draw: Caterpillars

My assistant teacher, Angela, showed the children a video of caterpillar's metamorphosis during a circle time one morning. The are some of the children's observations while watching the video:

Max: it's getting slimy...it's going to turn into a cocoon!

Noa: A chrysalis

Holden: Look at that!

Angela: What's happening to the skin?

Max: It's getting rid of it! .... I think it's magic

Theo: I think it's magic on its' head 

On noticing different parts of the chrysalis, the cremaster:

Holden: Maybe it has some dirt on it

Angela: It is darker than the rest of the chrysalis. Why would it have dirt there?

Max: I think it's soil

Theo: Maybe it's a piece of dark sand

Max: I think it makes it's own hook

Milo: Why does a caterpillar turn into a butterfly?

We checked on the chrysalis often for about a week and a half waiting for the butterfly to emerge but yet again we missed it as it happened over the weekend. The butterfly was born early morning on Monday June 22nd - as children arrived that morning I encouraged them to go check on the chrysalis. It was wonderful to see the children so joyful as they discovered the butterfly! We kept the butterfly for a day and a half in its cage for children to observe before we released it. Below are some of the children's observations:

Poppy: I notice that there's a cocoon. Oh! look he just fly! Hello little butterfly.

Ella: He's crawling

Milo: It's quiet. Oh, he fly, he's ready to fly!

Maya: The butterfly spread his wings

Max: Butterfly! It's a monarch

 Release of the butterfly

The sunflowers in the garden are getting really tall, we noticed some tiny cabbage loopers caterpillars munching on them very hard! We had to remove them before they ate the whole plants! We also spotted many caterpillars on the milkweeds. They grew fast! It was so exciting to witness the cycle again.

 Boys spotting for caterpillars

The garden is looking great! We keep discovering more plants than the ones that we had planted. We used lots of compost to fertilize the soil, and now two months later, there's squash and dandelions among other mysterious plants that we haven't been able to identify yet. Children still love to water the plants and spot different creatures in the garden, including tiny lizards. The garden is a wonderful addition to our classroom's environment, and it really provides a plenty of learning opportunities.

 Girls watering the plants

 Lizard!

Squash

Sunflower

Butterfly Garden

In the last two weeks we have been learning about butterflies. The idea started with a gardening project: Max and his dad Ron brought milkweeds and some flower seeds to plant in our playground. The milkweeds plants already had a couple of butterfly eggs on their leaves. On the day of the gardening children helped Ron prepare the soil by spreading compost with rakes and shovels. Next,
they helped to dig holes for the plants and seeds. Ron planted the milkweeds, and the children were given the task of planting the seeds. Before they had tossed the seeds into the ground, they gave them some love: "May you grow big and strong little seeds. Thank you for your beauty and grace." Once the seeds were all in, the children watered them.

                                               Getting compost from our compost bin

Spreading the compost

Milkweed plant

Flower seeds

"May you grow big and strong little seeds.

Thank you for your beauty and grace."

Children tossing the seeds in.

Watering.

Litte worm from the garden.

Every day since then we have been watering the plants and checking on the eggs. Finally, on Friday we spotted tiny caterpillars and noticed few little holes on the leaves on which the caterpillars have been munching.

Checking on the eggs with a magnifying glass.

Boys watering the garden.

Sunflowers sprouting.

Our other butterfly activities included: reading books about gardening and butterflies: Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner - a great story about gardening and garden creatures, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, and The Butterfly by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen, among others. The books helped us illustrate and learn about butterfly life cycle and get the children excited for our little garden.

To incorporate music and movement, we have been singing a caterpillar song and doing a butterfly dance, which involved colorful scarves. At yoga, we have been doing a garden flow this month.

Little Seed pose at yoga.

Butterfly Dance

In our "Art Center", I have been setting up this week an INVITATION TO DRAW with little butterflies and caterpillars on top of the mirrors for the children to get inspired to draw. I also added stencils for encouragement. 

It has been a great project so far. We are excited to watch the caterpillars grow every day and can't wait for beautiful butterflies to emerge in a couple of weeks!

Little Yogis

Children love movement activities so I decided to introduce yoga to my little friends. Yoga has a lot of benefits: it develops strong and flexible body, increases balance, body awareness and coordination, it develops core strength, calms the mind, expands imagination and creativity, relives stress and improve body-mind connection. I was really happy to find that children loved doing yoga since our first yoga session and now Wednesday is our yoga day!
We start our session with the song such as Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes to jump right into movement and get children excited. We then practice about ten poses; lots of animal poses with which we make animal noises to make it more interesting, transportation poses such as boat pose - singing Row Row Your Boat along. Some days we take turns and let each child teach us a new pose they come up with or the one they remember from the previous practice. Towards the end of our session we use the breath ball to take deep breaths to start calming our minds and bodies  and get ready for savasana - the relaxation. Each child takes a turn to take deep breath with the extendable ball then answers a question such as "what was your favorite part of the day today?" It is important to reflect on the day and it seems like perfect timing to do so at our yoga practice when the mind is clear. We finish up with savasana and foot massage which all the kids love!
I am planning on bringing in more props and extend our breathing techniques in our upcoming sessions.
Enjoy few pictures of the little yogis below!

Elephant Pose

Stretching

Breath Ball

It's Magic!

Children love painting in our classroom! They paint almost every day. They love working with both watercolors and tempera paint. Earlier in the school year they painted pinecones, pumpkins, paper rolls and even play dough but lately they have been mostly painting on paper. It was about time to bring a different painting surface for them to experiment with!
I brought in a big canvas so that we could make it a community painting and let everyone have a chance to work on it. The whole project took two weeks. Children were offered one color at the time to paint with and when that layer was dry they were able to layer another color. This helped to avoid colors being blended together as is usually the case when little artists get too excited and start mixing. When this happens even brightest paints mixed together turn into a big dark pool.  

On the first day children painted with blue paint and used rollers



Next day we continued working with rollers but with yellow paint



On the third day children painted with red paint using sponges of different sizes, shapes and textures.

Following week children used glue with glitter, tiny scrapes of shiny paper and buttons as their medium to give their work final touch. Some children sang "Jingle Bells" while working since they were using paintbrushes with bells attached to them at the top.



They truly had a wonderful time working on this piece!

Finally when the painting was dry children watched me hung it up on the wall and the first response was: "It's Magic"
Indeed magic it is! Wouldn't you agree?

Watercolor Exploration

It's been a great first month of school. We have been really busy getting to know each other, establishing classroom routines and figuring out what the interests of the children are for possible study themes.

We have been painting a lot with both tempera paints and watercolors. I personally love watercolors and decided to write about our watercolor exploration in this first post. The artwork is so pretty and there are so many opportunities for creativity and learning with watercolors!

On day one we used liquid watercolors, watercolor paper and paint brushes. At first children were offered just one color to work with and get familiar with the medium. Once they spend some time painting children were offered another color but most of them decided to continue painting with just one.

On day two we worked with liquid watercolors on paper towel using droppers. Children were practicing their fine motor skills as they pinched and let go the dropper to draw the watercolor into the dropper then pinch again to drip the watercolor onto the paper towel.

It took a lot of concentration and determination to learn the skill and even though it was not easy at first and children asked for help constantly they didn't give up and really enjoyed the activity! As they were working I encouraged the children to admire the colors and notice how they blend together on their paper towels.

On day three we went back to watercolor on watercolor paper. This time around children were offered couple of colors and were encouraged to use more than one. Most of the children went to town with their paintings mixing and blending colors, and  few decided to color the page with just one. We talked more about mixing the colors and creating new colors as they mixed two or three colors together.

To extend the watercolor exploration we offered colored water to play with outside in the sensory bins. Each bin was filled with different color and had tiny jars and buckets for children to play with.

Children filled one jar with water then poured it to the other jar, they used both jars at once to fill up with water then dumped the water back in to the bin. Some children filled tiny buckets with water from one bin and dumped it in another bin - mixing the colors!

In the afternoon children decided to add animals to the bins and used it for dramatic play; a girl put all the horses in one bin, a boy gave a bath to his dinosaurs.

Next day water was colored with glittered watercolors and children got to mix in black watercolor and watched it move around before blending in and disappearing slightly darkening the water. Again they mixed the waters between the bins creating darker colors.

We will continue working with watercolors and colored water, possibilities are endless and children really love it! Can't wait to see where will we take this study next!