Our weeks are always packed full with learning and fun! This week was an especially big week.

We were waiting all week as our caterpillars were in the chrysalis stage.

We knew it could take 10-14 days for the butterflies to emerge, so we got busy with our new unit: plants.

We read some good books about plants including what is in the soil and what happens above the soil, what happens when the seeds germinate, parts of a plant, and the life-cycle of a plant. We will continue this next week.

Then we planted some green bean seeds!

The plants live outside during the week and I bring them in on the weekends so they don’t dry out too much.

In reading, we learned about long a, i, o, and u. We learned about “magical E” and how the E makes the other vowel say it’s name. We did a LOT of practice with this but will continue when we learn about long E this coming week. It’s going to take a lot more practice. I decided to go back and teach some important sight words that they didn’t know and will do this until the end of the year. This week’s sight words were am, is, are, and it.

I read lots of books to them all of the time (this is their favorite thing). This week I brought out my Mother Goose book and a Mr. Rogers Poetry Book. They love them both! I also read The Tale of Peter Rabbit among many other great books.

I was able to get all of the kids assessed this week except for the ones who were absent. I’m finishing up those report cards this weekend and they will receive them Monday. Now that I know where they are, I have split them up into groups: butterflies, ladybugs, bees, and caterpillars. I will start meeting with small groups during our center time starting this coming week. We will start reading decodable books and I will teach them reading skills through the stories.

For math we are learning coins! We learned about pennies, nickels, and dimes this week. I’m going to start doing a number of the day with them as well because I’ve noticed the teens are hard for a lot of them. We also do some math centers every day that include practicing subtraction, using pattern blocks, sorting, and more! During our calendar time every day, we talk about the month, day, yesterday was, tomorrow will be, year, and we count by 10’s, 5’s, and 1’s to 100. I often play counting by 10’s and 5’s songs that they get to dance to. They love that.

Thursday one of our butterflies emerged! Then the rest emerged on Friday! Some of the kids got to see it when it happened. It was a big deal. Monday after they have had some time to dry out and drink some “nectar” (sugar water), we will release them into the world!

As you can see, we stay pretty busy. We also have PE every day, art on Mondays, computer lab on Tuesdays and Thursdays, music on Wednesdays, lots of center time, and more.

I have enjoyed being with your kids, and I feel like I have always been there. I’ll be sad when the year ends!