Week of May 4-8, 2015

The pre-K students in 106 are studying cycles and one cycle they are investigating is the cycle of a butterfly. They have cocoons in a box in their room and today TWO butterflies hatched! The students were able to watch the one butterfly emerge.

I thought we would embrace this opportunity for dialogue, so I took a photo of the butterfly and printed out enough copies for each child to have one, about the size of a playing card. We looked at the lines, shapes and colors of the butterfly. I asked them to vividly describe the experience.  I'm wondering if we could create a book based on this exciting cycle.


What happened in your room today?
Dashaluana- A butterfly came out of the chrysalis.
Jayleen- The butterfly flied like a butterfly.
Jeysiel- It broke the chrysalis.
Reynaldo- If you move it, it breaks.

Did you see it happen?
Some raise their hands.

Why did the butterfly come out? 
Devin- So he could drink.

Anyone else have a theory about why the butterfly came out? 
Shainelly- It didn't want to stick. It did it with its tongue because it wanted a drink.

Where did the chrysalis come from? 
Jeysiel- It was a caterpillar! 

Tell me more about this cycle. So first there was a caterpillar.
Jeysiel- And then it got out of the egg.
Devin- it growed up.

What do you see when you look at the butterfly? Do you see shapes? 
Devin- It looks like a heart!
Jayleen- It's like this. [Shows me a triangle shape around the wing with her finger.]Shainelly- I see circles! 

I took 101 outside to look for the alphabet in nature. We started by looking at the book Mrs. Bennett's class made and then this group took off. They quickly found and created letters out of sticks. 

The Kindergarten students have been studying living things we find outside. They took a very long nature hike last week when I was out with the Art Department, so they wanted to share about that experience with me. They showed me drawings they did on the hike and we talked about what living things they saw. 

I had a provocation set up with rubber toy models of bugs. I placed wire and washers on the table. I showed them how the wire can bend and how you can attach wire by wrapping it tightly. The students immediately jumped into creating the insects. 

The beginning of wire insects...

The second graders have been working on books about plants and growth. The students started by brainstorming what they know about plants. It's interesting to me that the books went in different directions and how the groups worked. One group of two girls created a poster about the types of plants you'd see in Buffalo. They worked together, each girl creating a different page and checking in to see if the partner was doing a good job.  Another group of two girls created two separate books with the same theme and pages. These books show how plants grow.  The third group was interested in how we use plants and became fascinated with a video about how paper is made from trees. They are each creating separate books about this process and Ms. Ulak, our art teacher, and I plan on having them make paper themselves soon!