SPRING/POLLINATORS

🌻🐝🦋 SPRING and POLLINATORS 🦋 🐝🌻

Hooray! It's finally Spring. The Quarter Notes have been enjoying the warm temperatures and I've been loving going outside without coats, boots, and snowpants! I'll be returning outerwear soon. But you just never know in New England.......remember the April 1st snowstorm years ago? 😑

This week we learned about Spring and pollinators. We talked a lot about bees and and butterflies. The class learned how they spread the pollen from flower to flower and the big vocabulary word, proboscus, what it is and what it does. We drank juice (nectar) with a straw (proboscus) and pretended to be hummingbirds or butterflies. 🥰 This activity made science fun and interactive. Hopefully the kids were able understand how drinking nectar works. It was pretty hilarious to watch.

Our butterfly cutouts were painted on one side. We folded the other side and revealed another design on our wings. The next day, we colored the wings, glued googley eyes, a pipe cleaner body and antennas onto the butterfly.

Two sets of laminated flowers were numbered 1-10. Depending on the group, I was either one on one or in groups of two overseeing the children as they recognized, counted and put the flowers in numerical order. We counted from one to ten and backwards from ten to one. The Quarter Notes did a wonderful job.

Construction paper flowers and cotton balls were used to show how pollination happens. We rubbed the cotton balls on our flowers, then rubbed them onto our friends flowers. This activity demonstrated how a bee collects the pollen and flies from flower to flower.

The Art Show is looming so we've been hard at work painting, learning about different artist and their work, making paper mache, and making a big mess! Not all the kids like to get their hands messy, but I encourage it! These messy moments are where they're using previous knowledge, hand eye coordination, and their imaginations to create and problem solve. Art and play are so important. 🥰 I've been reminding a few friends that we have soap and water to wash with after we finish.

Mandarin: Butterflies and seeds. Learning vocabulary words: banana, watermelon, and apple.

Music: Clapping our hands to the beat (while watching a video). Vivaldi/Spring.

Sports: Balancing, jumping, freeze dance.

😊 Have a great weekend! 😊

Alison Dressler