Life cycles and St. Patrick's Day,

We have been talking about change for the past two weeks. We have focused our learning on the life cycles of the butterfly and seed.
Talked about things that grow from a seed and tried to name a few. We weren't too sure so we looked at pictures of things that grow. I put some seeds in bags and had the children guess what grew form each. This is definitely a good lesson as our friends found it confusing and had a better understanding when we were done. Now everyone can name something that grows from a seed. We have birdseed, split peas, and beans in our sensory bin and we play with them using plastic eggs, egg cartons, and spoons. We planted peas and bell peppers in our garden and we are waiting for them to sprout. We learned that seeds need sun and water to grow.
We saw blue jays eating the strawberries that we are growing!!
While digging in our garden we found 8 cocoons buried in the ground. We were surprised that they had buried themselves because the cocoons in our container inside hang themselves from the lid to go into make their cocoons. We think maybe it's so the birds won't eat them? We marked on the calendar when the caterpillars started to change. We estimated how many days it would take for them to change into butterflies. We will see who is right and cont each day until then. (science, nature study, language, categorizing, sequencing, math, sensory, working together)
We had a great St. Patricks Day week. Thank you to all of you who remembered to pay to see the Irish dancers at Strawberry Rec. center! The girls thought their dresses and curly wigs were so cool and of course, I forgot my camera! (cultural and artistic experience)
We made a letter G by cutting green things out of magizines and gluing them onto our G. (hand eye coordination, language, reading readiness, colors, fine motor)
We made green play dough and sprinkled gold glitter into it. We played with it using rainbow colored Popsicle sticks. (colors, fine motor skills, sensory experience)
Thanks to those of you who also remembered to bring something green for our St. Pats Day party! We painted our faces and our friends faces at the park. We also got to take our clothes off and paint our bodies green. I won't post those pictures but I will give everyone their own copy- FUN!! (sensory, colors, fun!)
We all got to celebrate Ryan's birthday with him last week. He brought chocolate cupcakes with dinosaur sprinkles! We got to have a picnic lunch outside that day and we ate our cake outside too!
That week we did torn paper art using rainbow colors (practicing fine motor development, colors, creativity).
We made leprechauns and told little stories about our own leprechaun (language, storytelling,creativity, cultural folklore).
We made windsocks by gluing circles onto paper. We then used streamers in two different colors to hang down in a pattern. They are beautiful! (patterning, math, shapes)
April activity calendar coming soon!