Waiting for Butterflies

Our caterpillars arrived three weeks ago.

We've watched them grow

and form their chrysalis.

Now it's been just over a week and the waiting is hard.

Art helped us stay busy.

We did marble rolling on orange tissue paper with black

and brown paint.

They look fabulous on our windows.

We worked on symmetry.

And on large floor puzzles.

The last few days we've been painting butterflies

to welcome our butterflies when they arrive.

I expect to see some on Monday.

Raising Chicks Year 2

Last year we successfully hatched chicks at school.

It was very exciting and when the mom, who provided the eggs,

asked if we wanted to do it again I said yes.

Clea brought the eggs in three weeks ago and they were set up 

in the incubator.

Some of the eggs were from the chicks we hatched last year.

While we waited we played and learned about what comes from eggs.

Then this week the first egg began to crack.

We named him Uno.

After a few hours we took him out and introduced him to everyone.

Uno had to wait two more days before more chicks hatched.

Biking at School

It's Bike to Work Week and the staff and students

are encouraged to ride their bikes to school.

To celebrate we closed off the parking lot this morning

so our littlest students could participate.

It was so much more space than the playground pavement

we've used for the past two years.

We did our favourite things;

decorate our bikes with ribbons, balloons and licence plates,

washing our bikes,

and of course ride our bikes.

Especially through our pretend bike wash.

I think I'm going to have to make it taller.

I set up a StoryRide around the perimeter of the parking lot.

A few children noticed and read it with their grown ups.

We had more than 30 children participate

plus the kindergarten class joined us.

We set it up early so the primary grades could use it during

their recess time

 so a lot of children

rode their bikes at school this morning.

Evening Session - Sharing My Backyard

Each month I close one morning to open one evening.

This gives the whole family time to come together to play

and share a meal.

We do a potluck, usually at the school.

This month I hosted it at my house.

I wanted to share my husband's passion for trains

and invited the families to come and play

in our backyard.

These pictures show a bit of what my husband, Raymond,

 has designed and created.

Knowing that the children would want to play with the trains 

Raymond set out two train tracks on the deck

for the children to use.

The rule was;

Everything on the deck was hands on to play with,

everything on the grass was just to look at. 

Although I did create a scavenger hunt with pictures of some of

the Playmobile objects he used.

The children played and played.

Taking turns with the controls or enjoying moving the people, buildings

and other vehicles around.

Occasionally a train would derail and Raymond would fix it.

But as we know children will watch everything we do

and they were soon fixing it themselves.

Back on the grass the children ran around chasing the train

seeing where it was going and trying to guess where it would come out.

One of the children stopped and told me

"There's so much to see"

After enjoying dinner the children created swiss roll trains for dessert.

 

Story time included lots of  books and stories

about trains.

If you want to see more of OpaNanaLand

check out this video.