Langwood Education Center Here We Come


We have been studying habitats in science and were able to learn more during our animal field trip to Langwood Education Center with Kathy Dice and John of Louisa County Conservation on Friday. We watched birds in the bird blind, learned about animal tracks and made plaster casts to take home of an animal foot print, played the herbivore/carnivore food chain game, and dug up skeletons and reconstructed them being paleontologists. We finished our day by playing in the leaves before boarding the bus to go home. I am so thankful for the beautiful weather that we had and a couple of fathers that joined us to help. To see more pictures go to our website picture links.

Math Facts, Recycling, and Hermit the Crab

It has been a couple of busy weeks. We have been working on our math facts and the students are doing very well with their doubles and doubles plus one. They love to say "eighteen wheeler" for our  9 + 9 fact poster with a semi-truck. They all made large posters with the doubles facts and pictures to help them remember.

We have also been studying habitats in science. We are working on our flip booklets to add our information to. We are also starting our Scholastic Science Vocabulary Readers during Daily 5 and filling out tri-folds for the books that will help us become experts on many different animals and the habitats that they live in. Thank you to Jessica Winston for the tri-folds. I made some new ones with her blank template for my top readers with the National Geographic Kids books. We will end up putting all of this information together in a display.

This week we were able to visit the Southeast Recyclers. The students learned all about recycling from Professor Garbologist. They are good at picking up trash in our playground and recycling all of our classroom paper. Now they know just how much it does for our environment.

We have a new addition to our room. After hearing the story A House for Hermit the Crab, the Silva children brought in their hermit crab to visit our classroom for awhile. He is enjoying his visit and the children love watching him.

Fred Hatched!

Our butterflies are hatching. We have observed the growth and stages of  caterpillars and one has finally emerged from his chrysalis, that the class named Fred. We released him after looking at his proboscis and giving him a little sugar water for energy. He is now migrating to Mexico where he will be hibernating until time to start on his way back next spring. 


Each student has decorated a life-size, paper butterfly. These tiny butterflies are packed into a cluster and travel to Mexico inside our "class butterfly". The symbolic butterflies build bridges of communication and friendship between children of Mexico, the United States and Canada. The paper butterflies symbolize international cooperation for monarch conservation.  Our class will then receive butterflies next May made by students in classrooms across North America that continues the cycle of friendship and stewardship. We will  be able to track where our class butterfly lands with an interactive map. The students are now writing a story of the life and journey of Fred. This unit has integrated science, social studies, math, reading, and writing. For more information look at the Journey North website.