Happy April, Happy Spring!

There is a lot of excitement and new learning this month in the Manatee Classroom. 
Students are busy writing poetry, learning about insects, and practicing cooperation, which is our current character development theme. 

We are in need of more healthy snacks to feed our hungry manatees.

The students are eating up a storm!  Thank you for your kind donations.

Our yearly Poetry Celebration will be on Thursday, April 29th at 6:30.  Our theme is
Keep A Poem in Your Pocket, in honor of the celebrated day.  Students will share creative poems they have written, and recite the poem, Keep A Poem in Your Pocket,
by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers with their classmates.  Please join us for this fun literacy event!
In addition, students will share their Private Eye Poetry/Art exhibit.  By using 5X jewelers loupes, they are "zooming in" on objects like shells, coins, insects, flowers, etc. to gain a different perspective.  Students then draw the "new" view of their object, and finally write a metaphoric poem to describe their drawing.  This activity was taken from the Puget Sound Writing Project. 

Insects! Our classroom has blossomed into an entemologist laboratory.  Our students are observing ladybugs, crickets, milkweed bugs, and mealworms.  Some mealworms have reached the final stage of the metamorphosis cycle of adult.  This is what they look like at that stage, when they evolve into Darkling Beetles.  Our most recent arrivals have been caterpillars (larva).  Students will watch them morph into chrysalis (pupa), and then adult Painted Lady butterflies during the next few weeks.  We will have a butterfly release event to free the adults. 

We also have a new class pet.  In addition to Goldie, our goldfish, we now have a very interesting axolotl water salamander.  The students have named him "Speedy!"

Field Trip
Now that our students are becoming such experts on insects, we plan to broaden their horizons with new experiences and a larger variety of "bugs."  We will be going on a field trip to the Seattle BugSafari sometime in May.  We will keep you posted on the date and price. 

Upcoming Events

Jump Rope for Heart - Thursday, April 15th