Butterfly Garden

We having been helping to fix up the Butterfly Garden that is out the back of our classrooms.  The PTA helped to clear the top layer of soil off and then Steve came to help dig more soil out and help us to put some new weed matting on.  He did such an amazing job.  We enjoyed putting the bricks onto the weed matting to hold it down while we wait for nice new soil to arrive.  We can't wait to get into our garden, planting, weeding and looking after our caterpillars and butterflies.

Our last births

Friday was such a busy day!  We had the last two chrysalis hatch with two boy butterflies.  We can tell that they are boy butterflies because they have black dots on their hind wings.  We stayed after the bell had rung so we could all have a hold of our butterflies.  All our other butterflies had hatched during weekends so we didn't get to have a chance to hold them.
They felt tickly!  We didn't know that they had bits on the end of their legs that were like claws.  They need these to hold on tight.
Some of us needed to be very brave but we all showed compassion when giving them to others and in helping some of the children who were a bit scared.  It has been exciting watching our caterpillars turn into butterflies and now we need to make sure we look after our plants so they are ready to go into our butterfly garden at the end of the year.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Caterpillars and Butterflies

Today some of the children were wondering about our butterfly and where Miss Browne had found the eggs to put onto our plant.  We had a look at these videos.  Where do you think the eggs came from?

Our newest hatching.

Look what hatched over the weekend.  Is it a boy or a girl?

Caterpillars

We are loving having swan plants in our room.  We are noticing when the caterpillars turn into j's and then split to make their chrysalis.  Miss Browne noticed some new j's had been formed just after the children left to go home for the weekend.  

I wonder what they will look like when we all get back to school on Monday?

We also have some chrysalis hanging up in our room.  

I wonder when they will be ready to open and we will see the butterflies?

Our First Day together

Today we had a great day together finding out a little about each other and what we do in our classroom. We went for a walk around our school, found our butterfly garden and then had a look at the swan plants in our classroom. There were even caterpillars and one has made itself into it's j shape ready to go into it's chrysalis. We made a butterfly from a plastic bag, some red and yellow paper and some antennae from pipe cleaners.
 

We are very proud of our cool butterflies!

We talked about our values - respect, integrity, compassion, excellence, and Tolerance. Some of the children that were at school last year were good helpers in telling us what our values are called. We focused on respect today and how that would look in our shop area. We had fun with the registers, the weighing machines, the trolley and the food.
 We decided that to show respect we need to:
* take turns.
* use our manners.
* keep the food closed.
* put everything back where it belongs.

 We also made a dragonfly that is going to help us to remember about showing our values. We still need to finish this tomorrow by putting on its wings.

This afternoon we showed Miss Browne how clever we were at drawing a picture of ourselves. We also did some handwriting on balloons. We practiced how to write the letter 'b' and the sound that it makes. Unfortunately some popped but we showed that we were resilient and we got another balloon and carried on!

Just before home time we meet Mr Tuatara. He comes out when we need to reflect on our learning. These are our reflections from today: Lily liked making the dragonflies. Shontai learnt about caterpillars. "I found out that one was turning into a chrysalis". Mehdi liked making the dragonfly. Prapti liked making the dragonflies. Emily liked making the dragonfly. Larry liked making the butterfly. Tyler liked making the butterflies because it was pretty cool. My favourite thing was building the dragonfly cos dragonflies are my favourite animals like t-rex's. Alizae liked making the dragonflies. Grace liked writing 'b' on the balloons. Mohamed liked drawing on the balloons.

 Miss Browne is really proud of Room 2 today. We have had a great start and we can't wait to come to school tomorrow and meet lots of new friends.