Goodbye Butterflies

What a year it has been.  Your student has grown so much.  Many of the students I have known for two years.  I will miss this class.  But it is our job to give them roots and wings.  Together we have done just that. They are ready for the next step. Wednesday we celebrated with our annual picnic.

Good friends.

Two great cooks prepare lunches for their families.

Rae and Lyla complete orders.

It was a beautiful day.

Caterpillar picnic

Bittersweet picnic day for Mrs. Lewis.  Getting to know these children has been a blessing and a pleasure.  They are very ready to be Butterflies, in fact as of picnic time today, they ARE Butterflies!

First thing Butterflies want to do...climb to the top of the dome.  As Caterpillars they have been limited to the bottom rung.

Wonderful to see the families interact with each other.  Here's hoping you all enjoy a great summer.

Water Day!

Butterfly class wound up 5 senses week with Water Day.  Not as warm as we might have hoped, but in a sunny corner of the playground we were able to use squirt guns for target practice, draw on the parking lot with chalk, and use the fence to support our papers for spray painting.  We even ate our watermelon outside on the patio.  No person was drenched in the process, and only a few dampened, therefore a successful activity.  Special thanks to volunteers Miss Sharyl and Miss Melanie for their work in small groups today.

We weren't quite brave enough to take pictures during the squirting and spraying activities, but those full size chalk drawings were dazzling.

Caterpillars are growing...

We are growing beans!  Mrs. Schaefer helped the Caterpillar class put beans in our Window Greenhouse and there are roots and stems to be seen.
We also put a handful of beans into plastic bowls with lids, and wow, in 4 days time there is lots of activity there, too.  We will send these home next week.

Kind of a rainy Tuesday, so scooter fun was the order of the day for indoor recess.  We had quite a lot of traffic, but no serious fender benders,

G Week Butterflies

This week we learned all about things that grow.  We planted flowers for our moms.  Flowers and preschoolers grow. The students are growing up so fast.  They are getting ready to fly off to Kindergarten.  

 Lyla practices saying, "Happy Mother's Day!"

Some boy love for Mrs. Schaefer

Kaelyn shares a crazy costume.

Aurora reads a book during sharing.

Butterflies Pet Week 2014

This week was Pet Week. We read books about pets, played games about pets, and had many pet visitors. Thanks to all the families that helped make Pet Week so much fun. We also released three beautiful painted lady butterflies.

 

Today we played with Lyla's dogs, Sugar and Bolt. We talked about her responsibilities in taking care if them.

Cael's rat, Momo, visited this week.

Aurora's dog Mini loves preschool.

Madalynne's dog Sky Blue Hastings visits.

Isaac brought a dog and a baby!

We also did puzzles about pets after snack.We worked together to finish in time

Pet week was a learning experience for everyone, and a fun one. See you Monday!

Caterpillar pets

Ah, Pet Week.  We were blessed with good weather on Tuesday, and that plus our patio makes all the difference.  A pet turtle spend the day in the classroom.  The children were fascinated to watch Sen move around the box.  Two pet dogs visited us this morning (on the patio).  John Henry and Lucy were both well mannered and welcomed the children's interest.  We asked about food, baths, and walks.  We learned to hold our hand out to meet a dog who is standing with it's master, and occasionally, if a dog really likes us, we will be asked to shake a paw or rub a belly.  By the time Atticus visited at the end of the morning, walking out to the patio was not a big deal and we remembered how to greet him.
Our butterflies came out of their cocoons over Easter weekend, today we released 2 of the 5 into the warm spring air.  Pretty exciting day in BVPS Caterpillar land!

Happy Easter

We had so much fun today.  Several parents hid over 150 eggs TWICE on the playground for your children to find.  We also have special treats.

The butterflies are being extra careful with fragile eggs!

Aurora in her Easter bonnet.

Caterpillar Easter

It was a colorful week for the Caterpillars.  We colored eggs on Tuesday, and playdoh on Thursday.  The colored eggs were used in our Egg Hunt Thursday morning, we found them all...twice!  Thanks to the Willaby family for hiding them both times.  Plain white playdoh was changed to blue and pink(we tried for red) by adding liquid watercolor and mixing in a ziplock bag.  The children were able to create a marbelized effect, actually quite lovely.  Mrs. Lewis made _purple_ by mixing red and blue together.  We also played a matching game with Easter egg stickers on cards.  The differences were subtle, but no problem for sharp Caterpillar eyes.  I continue to see amazing growth in concentration and time-on-task.  Getting ready to be Butterflies!

Trent and Miss Mabel complete the Tower puzzle.

Mae made a star with her newly pink playdoh.

B B Babies everywhere

Baby week was loads of fun.  We read books and talked all about babies.  We all started out as babies and we have grown so much this year.  

David-Lee shared his baby with the classroom.

It took lots of working together to build this.

Big puzzle fun.

Mamas & babies

Babies week came at the perfect time...our caterpillars(baby butterflies) made the change to cocoons, and we wait breathlessly for the butterflies to appear.  This brought up the idea of ourselves, the Caterpillar class, turning into Butterflies in the future.  We looked ahead to May and found the day, May 22, when we will be BVPS Butterflies.  It looks far away to the children, but all to close to their teacher!

Silas and Mrs. T worked together to match all the mamas and babies.

Scissor work requires a lot of focus.  We worked on Bunny baskets for our Egg Hunt next week.

Caterpillar guests

Caterpillars got a jump on Pet week today(Week of April 21), when Mr. Mike and Miss Mary's friend brought her two totally different dogs to meet us.  A St. Bernard and a Pomeranian!  Caterpillar children were waiting on the patio outside the classroom, and let themselves be sniffed before taking a turn offering a treat and petting our new friends.  We learned that Sookie, the St. Bernard, is 4 years old, just like most of us...how big will she be when she's as old as Mrs. Lewis?

Insects and Spiders

This week we learned so much about insects and spiders.  We read books, observed live creatures, and made insects

Lyla shows off her bug.

Lyla's Daddy helps make bugs.

Teamwork and large bug puzzles go great together.

Butterflies and Community Helpers

We had some much fun this week learning about people who make Bella Vista a better place to live.  We read stories, made crafts, and enjoyed visitors.

These friends are working as veterinarians to make this puppy feel better.

 We are so thankful Officer Spann brought his police car when he came to visit.

Teamwork helped us complete the Community Helpers Alphabet puzzle.

Mrs. Schaefer and the boys

Mrs. Schaefer and the girls