Food Chain FLASH FREEBIE

I hope this finds you doing well! How is your school year going? We completed day 30 of school on Friday! Thirty days of twenty-two second graders who are energetic, hilarious, and just about as sweet as possible. My student teacher is winding her days; she has four remaining. So, this week, she'll be taking full days of teaching. I'm nervous and excited for her. I've already starting making a mental list of things I'm going to do while I'm in the back of the room supervising from afar. 

Have I mentioned that I love teaching math and science? I do! I love teaching math, because it always intimidated me in high school and college. (Speaking of college, How 'bout those Mississippi State Bulldogs defeating LSU last night?!?) Anyway... My love for science originated in my childhood. We had cows, cats, dogs, and even goats on our small farm in Alabama. I loved all things critter. 

Things haven't changed. I've been so excited to begin teaching life cycles. The children have been bringing in insects, spiders (sadly, one squished spider and one 6-legged one) to observe and discuss. We've had snails and "rollie-pollie" bugs (isopods), and even a grasshopper and cricket. It's been great fun letting the children become experts on the assorted critters that visited our classroom for the day. 

There's a green caterpillar in there!

We have caterpillars that are now tucked into their chrysalids. Before the caterpillars began their next step to becoming Painted Ladies, the children sanitized (before and after) and brought out their caterpillars to be measured and observed with hand lenses.

Students wrote observations in their learning logs.

I expect to see butterflies tomorrow. What a surge of excitement that will bring! We'll have a butterfly release day later in the week, most likely. We invite parents to join us for a picnic lunch on the school grounds. Generous parents bring bags of orange slices to entice butterflies to sit a spell while kiddos hold the slices. Talk about a photo op!

In addition to studying life cycles, heredity, and habitats, the children have been engrossed with the concept of food chains. So, I put together a food chain mini-research project, with the culminating 'craftivity' being a visual food chain. If you're interested in this mini-research project, you may download it FREE until Monday night, September 22!

But, wait... There's more!

We also have pekin duck eggs in the incubator. Pekin ducks, AKA the AFLAC duck, are so adorably cute and filled with personality. We had success in hatching them, last year, and we're optimistic that we'll have luck this year. We have eight pekin eggs, which were placed in the incubator on 9/15. They should hatch in about 28 days. In about a week, we'll also get Buff Orpington chicken eggs to place in the incubator. 

Source
NOTE: The ducklings that we hatch will NOT be consumed. They will go to a farm to live out their ducky lives.


Source

NOTE: The chicks will go to my brother's farm, where they will be kept as egg layers.

I'll keep you updated on how our menagerie does in the coming weeks!

Happy Sunday Night!