BUGS - My 7 - 11 Week in Review -

Maddie is addicted to bugs right now. I'm actually quite amazed because she is such a girls girl. She loves make-up, dresses, tea parties, nail polish..... and spiders, worms, and bugs! Ever since her class went on their first field trip to the Insect Museum, she's enthralled with starting her own collection.

Malin's mom is a first grade teacher at school and ordered some silkworms with mulberry leaves for Maddie's class. The kids have been watching the worms for the past week eat and eat and eat and eat. Finally, today they came to class and one of them had started to build its cocoon. It was actually even fascinating for me to see the little guy through the thin cocoon working diligently inside to make it stronger and thicker.

Maddie is even collecting bugs at home to take into class. She catches a bug in the morning and then brings into Ms. Preeti - she's so proud!

From Maddie's Weekly Newsletter....

• We continue to expand our knowledge about transformations and transitions through insect life cyles. Malin’s mother, Ms. Toa has given us some silkworms to keep and observe in our classroom. Children’s first observations were that they were caterpillars, that they could not be snakes, that they were worms! Great first observations! We then discussed what might possibly happen (prediction) after we looked after them for a while. Some children thought that they would become “very big”, “very hungry”, build a house and become a butterfly. These observations and predictions prove that children have extended their original learning about caterpillars and butterflies to other similar life cycles. Much excitement took place when we arrived in class this morning to find that one of the silkworms had metamorphosed into a pupa having built its cocoon.