April 16th Newsletter

Can you tell from the last SEVEN posts I've made from this week, that I am SO EXCITED to be back full time teaching!?!??!   We are so blessed to have Miss Dykes and it is an honor to work with her and get her ready for her own classroom...but I have to admit, it is HARD not being front and center!  It makes me appreciate my time with your babies even more!

Here is this week's newsletter (also found in your Friday folder today)!

April 16

Have a WONDERFUL three-day weekend!

With my best,

Kinkajou Construction!

This week, Miss Dykes began working with the kinkajou construction crews!

First the design crew met, making the plan and preparing the materials.

Head

Tail

Body

Teamwork

Stuffing

Working on the claws and paws.

Habitat Crew preparing flowers (they drink the nectar)

Proud friends!

Facts and KWL chart hanging outside our door!

Although he looks like an anteater alligator, we promise it's a kinkajou!

Come take a look outside our classroom!

Plant Life Cycles...

On Tuesday of this week, we got to have some planting fun!  Not only do animals and insects have life cycles, but plants do too!  We were able to plant grass seeds (it's going to be silly project, you will understand once it is finished)!  Thanks to Cayden's mom for supplying the cups, we are getting to watch the seeds grow in the dirt!

We can't wait to see our first sprout!

From Caterpillar to Butterfly...

In addition to our eggs/chicks, we have caterpillars in our room!  When they arrived, they were SO SMALL and you could barely see them.  In over a week, they've proven to be "very hungry caterpillars" and growing to this size!

We are sad to say, that we think over the three day weekend, we will MISS the transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis!  But that just means we are one step closer to having butterflies in our room!

On Thursday, we completed a life cycle of the butterfly to hang behind our chicken life cycles!

Chicken Life Cycle

As you know, we are patiently awaiting our chicks in the classroom incubator!

We have 14 eggs, and as of Tuesday (when I candled them) they all "seem" to have development inside!  There was 1 "iffy" egg, that I was unsure of!  Fingers crossed that next week we will have 14 babies hatching!

This week for Shared Reading, we've been comparing fiction vs. non-fiction books AND life cycles!

We are on day 15 right now!

We made our own chicken life cycles to represent our knowledge of each stage...

We traced our hand for the hen.

They are proudly hanging in our classroom!

I hope you are as excited as we are about the upcoming birth!!!  I promise to email and blog the details!