Dear Parents,
On Monday we read Growing Colors, Trees: A Rooted History, Plants Are Alive!, and Where Do Insects Live? We read about insects and animals living in trees, eating trees, and camouflaging themselves to look like parts of trees. We saw pictures of seed sprouts that looked similar to ours.
We made tree bark rubbings of our tree in our yard using crayons and paper. Some children used one color while others used all the colors. As we drew, we saw ants crawling up and down our tree.
We made small purple sculptures using air drying clay. Children made people, paths, a shredder, a rocket, a unicorn snake, a monster stuck in a cave, water with fish in it, and six tiny fish eggs.
We used our Feely Box this week. The guesses were mostly a ball, with a few people correctly guessing the biggest seed, a coconut. We cracked open the coconut to see what was inside. Most wanted to taste the coconut milk but only two liked it. The same two friends ate most of the coconut fruit, others only nibbles.
We read The Dandelion Seed, Leaves! Leaves! Leaves!, and What Do Insects Do? We looked at real dandelion seeds up close. The children pretended one seed was scared to jump off of the flower like the one in the book. Children added pumpernickel, kiwi, cherry, and watermelon seeds to our collection.
While half the children drummed and marched with Alex in the big room, in the classroom we read The Mosquito, The Fly, Head Lice, The Slug, The Worm, and The Spider. We differentiated which of these were insects and which were not. Our books told us insects have three body parts and six legs.
We used magnifying glasses to examine our insect collection. Some wondered if the bugs were alive or dead. “Dead” many children answered. We have several bees, a fly, a cicada, a roach, a dragonfly, and a rhinoceros beetle.
Frank, aka the bug man, came to visit on Thursday and brought many insects and arachnids. We assumed the creatures would be dead, but much to our delight, they were all very much alive! When he pulled out the first 8 inch bright green Malaysian walking stick, the class was thrilled. “She’s cute!” and “This is awesome!” were among the many comments. We had written a list of questions before he arrived but they were quickly replaced by new ones: What’s the biggest bug you have? Are they all alive? Can we touch them? Do they sting? Why aren’t you getting that one (Arizona scorpion or the Mexican red knee tarantula) out to hold? Frank answered, “Because it has a nasty sting” and “Because it emits an itchy powder in self defense.”
He also told us about our classroom paper wasp nest; that the wasps chew bark to make their paper nest. He also showed us a leaf insect from the Philippines, a Goliath tarantula that can grow to the size of a dinner plate, (his was closer to a saucer), a pink dragon millipede from south east Asia, and a Tanzanian millipede that was about six inches long. Frank told us we couldn’t hold the creatures because some might sting and they get stressed out being handled too much. He held most of them, except a few moody ones. It was pretty exciting and held the class’s attention for almost an entire hour.
When we went outside later, many children were pretending to be spiders and catching each other in webs.
On Friday we read more insect books. We also watered our seeds twice this week and watched as they slowly grew.
Have a buggy weekend!
Therese