Tuesday when I was eating lunch in the teacher's room I saw one of the recess aides run into the teachers' room and grab a plastic jar and run back out to the playground. Something told me that my students had just caught something and were about to put it in the jar. There were at least 3 different classes at recess but somehow I knew it had to be my students the jar was for....and sure enough, it was. I walk out to pick up my class from recess and my 5 girls run up to me with the jar hidden under their jacket saying "Can we keep it??"....Umm...keep what?! It turned out to be a moth that they had put in the jar along with some dandelions for it to eat. Of course I said we could keep it! I didn't expect it to live for long but it could stay with us for the day. Well the moth, Rainbow, lived for three days.....Actually, it was 4 days come to think of it! Tuesday-Friday. My girls kept feeding it dandelions and watering it. Friday after recess I said it was time to let it go. We took a "field trip" to the tree and let it go there. The girls were upset but they understood. We got back to the room and of course the discussion turned to Rainbow. One of my boys said, "She looked pregnant!" And another boy shouted out, "She would need a mate for that and she has been in the jar." (Thank you, hon, for sharing with us about mates and babies.....) I said, "Well...if she was pregnant (not likely, but if she was) then perhaps she found a mate before we found her. (although I know nothing about moths...)" Then my girls got all upset at the possibility that they had taken this poor moth away from her family....It was really a lose/lose situation with my girls being upset over the moth...but at least we had fun watching Rainbow for a few days. Here is a picture of Rainbow the miracle moth:
On Wednesday we had a special guest speaker come to our classroom to share with us her knowledge about birds. Mrs. G is a teacher at our school and loves birds. So, when our reading story for the week was about birds living in the city, I couldn't resist asking Mrs. G to come share with us about birds. The students loved learning more about birds! Mrs. G had some home footage of cranes in a field dancing that the students loved. She also showed us how long a Californian condor's wings are. We were all amazed at this! She also left us with many bird books, stuffed animals, and coloring sheets. One of my students even made a paper nest for one of the birds Mrs. G let us borrow.
Also on Wednesday I had planned for us to plant seeds. Mrs. G's bird talk lasted a little longer than I thought (but it was such a good time that I didn't mind at all!) so we didn't have the scheduled time to plant seeds. However, the pre-sprouted seeds needed to be planted that day. So we multitasked. Our room is only a few steps away from the play area for recess so we went out there and as soon as their seed was planted they ran to play at recess. We amazingly got it done (the motivation to play at recess was a good "move along" for the students who wanted to just play in the soil). After recess we had to get packed up as we had choir that afternoon. So half of the students watered their seeds and the other half packed up. When we got back from choir they switched. I hope the seeds grow! I do not have a green thumb at all and have in fact killed some herbs I had planted at home.....but perhaps these will work so they can go nicely with our science plant unit.
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