Snail Week

Near the end of school we have snail week. We collect enough small margarine tubs for each child to have a snail and a snail house to keep it in. We oberve, feed and clean up after our snails daily. We make paper snails, and do drawings of snails. We also do some math using our snails... we estimated height, length and weight then calculated the actual height, weight and length. We had a snail curcus where we found out if our snail could hang upside down, walk a "tightrope" (pencil), go over spikes (on a fork), crawl through a tunnel (toilet paper tube) and go over sand paper. On Friday, we had snail races. We made visors and banners to cheer on our racers. There were 4 heats with 4-5 students in each heat. The snails started in the middle of the track then moved to the outer circle. I gave a ribbon to each child saying "Congratulations! Your snail earned 1st (or 2nd-5th) in the race! It was a fabulous week!

Bees

In May we enjoy a funfilled insct unit. My favorite week of the unit is when we study bees. GEMS has a FABULOUS unit on bees called "Buzzing a Hive." It is really hands on and interactive, and makes a nice change for us in spring when we are all feeling a little wiggly. The first lesson is to make a paper bee with all the correct parts. We look at real, dead bees and a poster of a bee and then set out to make our bees together. Another day we make paper flowers with stamen that have pollen on them after we have used cotton balls to find pollen in real flowers. Later in the week we make cells for our big hive with things in them you would find in a real bee hive. I use soybeans for an egg, a white pipe cleaner for larvae, waxed paper for wax, yellow powdered tempura for pollen and yellow paint for honey. More in the writing and art area coming soon!