Holy Rollies and the Wilderness

It’s Monday and at Miss Amy’s that means “Outdoor Classroom”.  We take a short journey to a nearby park and explore what mother nature has to offer. The children look forward to it and it’s the perfect cure for the Monday blues. We let them guide themselves and try not to intervene too much. Today we brought clay for impression making, their sketch books, pastel chalks, charcoal, pencils, and a bug net.

The park we visit is beautiful but it is far from a jungle or even a forest, but the kids always equate our visits to being in the wilderness. They seem to go into foraging mode almost instantly.

A feather collection is started

The bug net spiked their interests immediately. They caught and observed a firefly, dragonfly, and an earwig.

 

Then one little boy noticed some decaying wood under a tree. He lifted up the wood and exclaimed, “Look Holy Rollies!”. One of the older kids said, “Do you mean Roly Poly’s ? They like to live under wood!”. The younger boy agreed that that’s what he meant, but for the rest of the day almost everyone referred to them as holy rollies.

-Miss Amber

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A farewell to our butterflies.

Our caterpillars turned into butterflies over the weekend.

On Monday morning we gathered all the children at Miss Amy’s on our lawn, and let our butterflies go. Butterflies can fly very fast!

This is what the empty chrysalises look like. The little black blobs are the exuvia,  which contains the head capsule from when the butterflies were caterpillars.

Our garden is growing very well. We are growing kale, lettuce, potatoes, Swiss chard, carrots, radishes, peas, cauliflower and beets.

The children are doing a good job, helping to water our garden and to monitor our plants’ progress.

Today, Friday, we had our annual Field Day. We played games and had a picnic lunch with ice cream cones for dessert.

Wishing everyone a great weekend!

– Miss Maria

Life and death at preschool.

Butterfly update: We moved our five chrysalises to a larger container, with netting on the sides and clear plastic on the top and bottom and with a zippered top. As we were watching the chrysalises one day they started to wiggle vigorously! This is normal. It is a way to scare off predetors.
The very first of five chrysalises hatched and our first Painted Lady butterfly was born! This all happened yesterday, while no one was looking. You can see the hatched chrysalis in the photo in the top left hand corner. The little dark blob that you can see, is the exuvia  that contains the head capsule from the caterpillar stage. We are hoping that the remaining four chrysalises will wait until Monday to hatch so that we can witness this amazing event. In the bottom photo you can see an orange-red liquid on the side of the mesh, it’s called meconium. It is not blood but the waste product of the chrysalis.

Our very first Painted Lady butterfly, or Vanessa cardui, as it is also known is beautiful, don’t you think? If you want to find out more about the Painted Lady butterfly, check out this website.

We had one birth this past week, but also one death. One of our goldfish died and was buried on Monday.

First we dug a hole next to our rabbit Flopsy, who died several years ago. Each child said good bye to our pet fish and put a flower on top of him/her that they had selected and picked themselves. The children took their time selecting their flowers, and decided to pick some for their Moms and their Grandmas at the same time!

Our hen, Minerva Louise has been very busy laying eggs every day for several weeks now.

The children enjoy feeding Minerva Louise special treats, as a thank you for the eggs she lays.

Wishing everyone a happy weekend!

Photo credit goes to Miss Susie, for taking the photos that I am in myself.

– Miss Maria

Butterflies will soon be fluttering by…

We have five visitors here at Miss Amy’s: Painted Ladies or as they are also known, Vanessa cardui.
They started out as tiny green eggs from which hatched tiny caterpillars.
The tiny caterpillars grew fast. Soon they suspended themselves from their last prolegs and started the molting process with can last as long as 24 hours. It is pretty hard to see it in my photo, but the chrysalis or pupa
are a brown or tan color with beautiful gold specks. When the chrysalis are almost finished the caterpillars’ heads capsule falls off! This is completely normal. After about 10 days the Vanessa cardui emerges. At the time of writing this the butterflies had not yet emerged. Please check back for an update next week!

We have been talking about how butterflies start out as an egg, how they hatch into a caterpillar, how they eat (a lot, and fast!), and how they make a sleeping bag, of sorts (the chrysalis or pupa) and how they change and turn into a butterfly which we will let go,so they can find nectar to feed on and meet up with their friends. We are hoping to be able to watch our Vanessa carudi emerge this coming week. Did you know that it takes about an hour for the butterflies’ wings to expand and ‘harden’ before  they can fly? The Painted Ladies live for between 10-24 days as a caterpillar.
They are one of the most widely distributed species of butterflies in the world and can be found on every continent except Antarctica and Australia.

We have enjoyed reading Eric Carle’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
We learned a very important lesson, namely that one should stick to eating foods that are good for you, if you don’t you might get a very bad stomach ache! See for yourself! Check out what the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate on Saturday…

I will post an update on our Vanessa cardui next week.

Until next time!

– Miss Maria