The Beauty of Butterflies

Beauty in the Midst of Tragedy...

While the past week was a horrific week for our country, it was an uplifting, happy week at Pre-K.  While my heart was heavy about the events that transpired in Boston and Texas, the most amazing thing happened right in the middle of it all.  All week long, the children waited for our beautiful butterflies to come out.  Everyday, we were eager to check on them and slightly disappointed when we found chrysalides each time.  On Friday, I placed the butterfly garden on one of our tables.  Throughout the day, the children were so eager to watch over their little chrysalides.  Many of them sat there for long periods of time and watched patiently and quietly, making sure to not shake the table and harm the transformation.  Suddenly, I heard the most adorable sound.  A group of A.M. girls and boys were sitting around the table and began singing our butterfly song:

(To the Tune of Itsy Bitsy Spider)
The fuzzy caterpillar curled up on a leaf,

Spun her little chrysalis and then fell fast asleep.

While she was sleeping she dreamed that she could fly...

And later when she woke up, she was a butterfly!

They all began singing it over and over again and then I head a big commotion.  Two of the butterflies had emerged from their chrysalides!  It was so innocent and beautiful to see this happen.  What was really cool was that the P.M. kids also thought of singing to them.  They also read to them!  By the end of Friday, 4/5 butterflies were flying around the garden.  Hopefully, we will find our 5th one when we come back tomorrow!

Here is a summary of what we did this past week:

Uu, 15, and Me & My

We followed our typical routine for learning a new letter (Fundations drill, introducing new letter/sound, finding Uu words in our pocket chart, Heidi Butkus song).  I was so proud of my little letter detectives who found letter Uu all over the classroom.  Some places we found Uu included in our days of the week (Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday) as well as many of our months, classmate names, color names, etc.  I didn't even ask the children about many of these, they just discovered them on their own.  We have a bunch of smart cookies!  We practiced finger tracing and writing our new letter and learned that writing Uu is like making a smiley face.  While working on our alphabet books, the children used umbrella manipulates to practice tracing/forming the letter Uu.  I was really impressed to see some of them creating patterns.  For Uu, we read The Umbrella by Jan Brett, a story of the rainforest.  We discussed animals in the rainforest and used the felt board to tell the story.  We reviewed story elements such as title, setting, characters, and sequenced events.  We also made predictions while reading.  Our number of the week was 11 and our popcorn words (aka sight words) were me and my.  We also worked on basic addition and subtraction.

The Butterfly Life Cycle

This is one of my favorite things to teach.  Especially since we get to see it all happen.  Science is such a fun subject area for any age.  Preschool aged children are naturally curious, so that really motivates them to learn.  They were so excited!  I've always believed that children learn best when they learn through experience and with authentic, real life experimentation and observation.  I ordered our caterpillars through Insect Lore.  This week, we observed the chrysalis phase.  The children had previously observed the caterpillar phase.  I taught the butterfly life cycle over the course of the last few weeks.  I introduced the topic by creating a science display with posters/visuals, magnifying glasses, fiction and non fiction books, and the jar of caterpillars.  We observed the caterpillars and chrysalides and created illustrations in our journals during these past few weeks.  I also taught them important vocabulary.  This week, I went into more depth.  I read From Caterpillar to Butterfly to teach the process of metamorphosis to the children.  We talked about our own experiences with caterpillars and butterflies, discussed more vocabulary, compared the butterfly life cycle to the ladybug life cycle that we learned in February, and learned the song I discussed at the beginning of this entry.  They created little pop up books to illustrate this process.  All week, we reviewed the butterfly life cycle with our facts and song.  We also read the well known, adored story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Our Hungry Caterpillar crafts were a blast!  We used balloons to paint our own hungry caterpillar and created some food at the cutting center.  We can't wait to put these in the hallway!  We also created beautiful coffee filter butterflies.  On Friday, we discovered the miracle of life when our butterflies emerged.  The kids are so in love and treat their new pets as if they were newborn babies.  It was so cute to see them singing and reading to them.  Everyone wanted to name our little creatures, so we picked some names out of a hat.  Here are the winners:  Flutter Friday, Bonjour, Cupcake, Chloe, and Mario.  

More Earth Day Fun

We continued to discuss ways to take care of our planet this week.  We reviewed the 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and read We are Extremely Very Good Recyclers starring Charlie and Lola from the Disney Channel.  We learned about recycling, reducing, and reusing household products such as plastic, metal, and paper.  In preparation of Earth Day, the kids  created beautiful trees using recycled magazines and newspaper.  We also discussed other ways to recycle!

When Tragedy Strikes...

I hope that all readers are enjoying the weekend and are safe.  It's unbelievable how many people were affected this week.  A relative of mine was running in the Boston Marathon and finished two minutes before the blast.  She witnessed it from only a block away.  We're so happy that she is safe and I hope that everyone's loved ones are too!  A father of a fourth grader that my fiance works with was in the marathon and they didn't know if he was okay until hours after.  This poor little girl had to worry about her state tests during the same week and was completely overwhelmed and emotional.  Things like this make me think about how to handle tragedy in the classroom.  What I've learned from tragedies we experienced in the past (a little girl who lost most of her family in a horrific crash last year, death, sickness, separations, disasters, etc) is that children need to feel safe, loved, and cared for at all times.  That is always the first priority.  When tragedy comes into the lives of their students, teachers need to show compassion and sensitivity to that child as well as their classmates.  No matter the age, children experience grief.  What I've found works well is to keep the information at a safe minimum, to be open and optimistic, and to use art as a means of expression (drawing pictures, making cards, etc).  Even when we don't experience tragedy, I explain the importance of being a "team" and caring for each other to my students.  What's beautiful to see is how much they show this when a tragic event occurs.  They are all caring, amazing, children.  You never know what will happen and unfortunately, sometimes life throws unexpected curve balls.  To help me grow as a teacher and a person, I hold onto these moments and take everything I can get from them.  Most importantly, I stick close to my little ones and try to help the families involved.