Timberwolf Trail - Week 24 - 2016-17 Edition

With Spring officially here (though today's mid-30's temperatures might have made it seem otherwise), we focused on a sure sign of Spring: Butterflies. We kicked off the day reading Becoming Butterfly by Anne Rockwell, a story that shows how a classroom "raised" monarch butterflies. We will be doing the same soon with Painted Lady butterflies.

We then used old toilet paper rolls and some markers and created a representation of the butterfly life cycle. Then, as we snacked, we watched a time lapse video of a caterpillar changing into a butterfly through our cool science word of the day: metamorphosis.

We headed outside and went to the "inside"tree to find sign of spring while I was on the hunt for "aliens."

We found feathers, green plants, buds, and even a pair of mandibles, but no aliens.

After calling off the search, it was off to the grass class to learn our new insect song, Head, Thorax, Abdomen. After belting out this newest tune, we took the shortcut to the less muddy grass to learn and practice our butterfly life cycle actions. They are:

EGG!

CATERPILLAR!

CHRYSALIS!

BUTTERFLY!

Then it was back to hunt for the alien. Now, I don't mean little green martians from the movies. What I was looking for was little and green and from a faraway place. I was searching for something even worse: garlic mustard. I chatted with the kids about how alien invaders, or invasive species, are selfish plants and/or animals that take the nutrients, water, air, and sunlight that our native plants and animals need. It was our duty to get rid of them, But first, we needed to find them.

Though last year's class were excellent garlic mustard eradicators, we were able to find a few spots where the very small plants were shooting out of the ground. We practiced pulling them out by the base to get the root.

We are excited to search for more. Hopefully, we don't find much, but we now know what to do if we do.