Springtime is Here!

Or should I say, "SUMMERTIME is here!"  No, not summer vacation.  Summer weather!  It reached 90 degrees yesterday!  Oh My Gosh! The kids are already ready to go in from recess after just 15 minutes of running around!  What will summertime be like in July/August in Florida?  I am so glad I'll be going to Alaska for a couple weeks in the summer.  I just hope we don't have any major hurricanes head our way, but with the ocean heating up already.....  The father of one of my students was transferred to Colorado.  He and his mother will join him when school is out in May.  They went to visit him not long ago, and it was warm!  Then just the other day there was snow on the ground.  The mom said to me, "Can you imagine what it is going to be like trying to dress him for school in that type of weather?!"  Oh, we Floridians have no clue!
But back to SPRINGTIME.....

We have two monarch chrysalises at the moment. (There are three on the plant, but we gave one to another class.) The students came in on Thursday morning and were excited to see that the caterpillars had attached themselves with silk to the top of the habitat and were hanging in a "J".  I told them that we would probably see some chrysalises before the day was over. 

As they were getting down to their morning work and I was greeting students at the door, one of the children yelled, "Mrs. Berry, Mrs. Berry, I think I see some green!  I think it's starting!"  I went over, and sure enough, it had started to form its Chrysalis.  I called them all over and they watched the miracle in progress! 

Once it had completed its chrysalis formation and had stopped wiggling, I put the habitat under the Doc Cam and told the students we would just keep it up on the projector and maybe we would see when the other one started its chrysalis formation.  Well, sure enough, about 15 minutes later when we were at Carpet Time, one of my little ones noticed the 2nd one starting the process.  So we watched it on the Big Screen and I was able to videotape much of the process.  The kids were sooooo funny!  The 2nd one was more active in its formation and it went much more rapidly.  One of my students said, "It's doing The Worm!"  Someone else said, "No, it's doing The Caterpillar!"  I turned around while filming and saw a whole bunch of the students standing up with their hands close by their sides, wriggling around and they did indeed look like that caterpillar!  I could kick myself for not turning the camera on them!  It was hilarious!  They certainly involved many of their senses in THAT lesson!
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