May 10th, 2013- Life Cycle of a Butterfly

Please remember to return the book publishing order form on Monday, even if you do not want a book.

Highlights from the Week:

• Special Theme of the Week: Life Cycle of a Butterfly
• Heart Word of the Week: where
• In language arts, we read a really neat book called, Fish Faces.  It introduced us to new and interesting types of sea creatures.  With this book, we practiced the skill of comparing.  We talked about how some of the sea creatures are the same and how they are different.
• In writing, we worked on the book we are publishing. We started the process by brainstorming what our favorite part of kindergarten was and a couple details about that experience.  We then wrote a rough draft that was edited by our "editor" who gave us extra ideas on how to make our story better.  We then worked on the pictures for our book, deciding on a name for the book, and deciding on the dedication for the book.  It was a really neat process!!
• In math, we individually solved some tough story problems using white boards or cubes.  These story problems involved comparing quantities and grouping objects together.  We then created our own story problems that we could practice solving.
• In science, we focused on learning about the life cycle of a butterfly.  We read many books, acted it out with our bodies, watched movies, and made a life cycle bracelet.  We also are presenting the life cycle of a butterfly on our bulletin board in the hallway.  It is based off of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Every day, we feed our sock caterpillars whatever food that the caterpillar ate in the book.
• During community centers, we have a few activities based off of the life cycle of a butterfly.  In our butterfly garden, we are retelling The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  At our art center, we are using our hand prints to represent the life cycle.  We are also representing the life cycle at our fine motor center.  We are using different shapes of pasta to show each stage.  We are still observing our caterpillars as well in our dramatic play center.  All five caterpillars have how turned into a chrysalis!  It was really neat watching them do this!