Plants and Butterflies!

It has been sooooo busy in our classroom the last few weeks.  I absolutely love Spring and all the fun things we learn about.  We "planted" our seeds and put them in the window so we could watch the roots and stems grow.

 

 A little photo-bombing from our student teacher - LOVE HER!!!!!!!!!!

 
 After they sprouted we took them down and wrote about them in their journals.

Then we got to plant them in soil!

We also studied the life cycle of a butterfly.  These pics are a little blurry because I was taking them through the net.

 I was so excited about this picture because you can see the proboscis as it's sucking from the orange.

We really enjoyed them but had to let them go.  One was pretty stubborn and I had to do a little coaxing but it finally flew away.

If we weren't already busy enough, we just started our Woodland Animal Research and Writing Project!  More to come on that later!



Have a great rest of the weekend!

Spring Activities and a little Confession!

So I'm very disappointed!  I totally had a post planned of all kinds of randomness with all kinds of pics but left my camera at school.  Oh man!  Well, I only had these 3 pics on my phone so this is what you get tonight.  :)

We finally had to take our plants home because they needed to be re-potted!  They all turned out so well!

Here are our "painted ladies".  They are finally all in their chrysalis.  My firsties CANNOT wait until they emerge!  Much anticipated excitement!

Oh - FUNNY STORY - so we found a caterpillar on my husband's truck and we kept him and brought him to school.  He was fat and very hairy.  My students instantly named him Hairy!  So I knew Hairy should be trying to change into his chrysalis soon and would need a way to be able to hang upside down.  So I try to "rig" a way for him to be able to get to the top of his little "bug catcher" we had him in.  I spent about 30 minutes after school one day last week working on it.  My daughter and I came to school and we could not see Hairy ANYWHERE in his little cage.  We finally spot what looks like a wad of silk inside a leaf on the bottom of the cage.  My students look up pics of cocoons/chrysalis's online and figure out he must be a moth instead of a butterfly.  So we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a moth now.  Wow!  Who knew?

Ok - CONFESSION TIME!  I am a fairly organized person and fall a bit on the OCD side of neatness, but there is a corner of my room that I pile things up when I don't have time to take care of them.  Does anyone else have a corner that looks like this? 

Please tell me you do!  When I look at this mess my skin almost crawls but I can't seem to find the time to tackle it very often.  There always seem to be more "pressing" things to take care of.  I would love to hear of other teachers that keep a "corner" like this!  (Mainly because I want to feel better about myself! :) )

Hopefully I will remember my camera tomorrow and can add to the randomness of this post!  Happy Monday and have a great week of teaching!