Attention Parents!

The June newsletter is now posted under the monthly newsletters tab.

Bean Plants and Caterpillars!

When we left school on Friday, our caterpillars were still just crawling around and our bean plants were relatively small sprouts.   When we arrived at school this morning, we found that our caterpillars were beginning to form chrysalises and our bean plants had grown quiet tall.

Beans!

Today most of us were able to plant our beans.  Earlier in the week we put our bean seed into a ziploc baggie with a wet paper towel and taped it to our classroom window.  Today most of the beans had begun to sprout, so we planted them into small pots.  There isn't much to see yet, but they will grow quickly so check back often for updates.

Caterpillars!

Today our caterpillars arrived!  It is going to be a week or two before anything starts to happen, but we're very excited about them.  We will be starting to learn about caterpillars and how then become butterflies.  Keep checking back for updates!

 The tiny caterpillars.

iPads

Last Friday, we were lucky enough to get the use the iPads that our school currently has on loan from the school district.  We explored Word Magic. It gave us a word that had a missing letter and 3 choices.  We had to decide which letter filled the missing spot by listening to the sound of the word.  Then we explored 3 cool drawing apps; Draw and Tell, Kid Doodle and Drawing Pad.  After that we had some free time to explore the apps. Quite a few people choose to go to a couple of favourites from the iPods - Monkey Math and Sock Puppets!

 Word Magic - h_ve

 It's great because everyone can go at their own speed and nobody can look at a neighbour to see which letter they should choose because they all have different words.

 Exploring Draw and Tell. Create a picture and then record something about it and play it back!

Honeybee Center

Today was our fieldtrip to the Honeybee Center.  We were all very excited!  We got on the bus and it was only supposed to be a short ride. Unfortunately, there was some construction and we were detoured a couple times and stuck in traffic for a little while. But we made it to the Honeybee Center and had a great time.  The first thing our group did was learn about insects. (We already knew a lot because we had been learning about insects in class).

 We learned the difference between insects and arachnids.

Building an insect.

Touching a cockroach.

Exploring in the insect house.

Insects around the world.

After learning about insects we met with the rest of the group and learned about honeybees and how they make honey.

 Honeycomb Challenge! Which group could make the most honeycomb cells.

 Tasting the sweet honeycomb.

 Bee Keepers!

We had such a fun morning at the Honeybee Center!

Complete Honeybee Display

On Thursday we told you about the honeycombs we made. Our bulletin board is now complete with honeycombs and honeybees.

 Honeybees up close.

Honeycomb

This week we learned about one particular insect.  The honeybee!  We learned about the roles of the different bees within the hive and the life cycle of the honeybee.  Today we learned the beehive is made up of thousands of hexagonal cells.  All the cells together make a honeycomb.  Inside each cell is wax (represented by wax paper in our replicas).  Each cell is used to store different things; honey (gold cellophane), pollen (rice) and larvae (macaroni).  Here are some of them.  On Monday, Mrs. Morrison will post a picture of the final display we create with them.

Insects

Last week we learned about insects.  We learned that all insects have 3 body parts - a head, a thorax and an abdomen.  Insects also have 6 legs and 2 antennae.  These are the insects we created.