Summer School Monarchs!

ss class 09Hi everyone,

I hope you all are having an enjoyable summer vacation. My vacation officially started on Thursday afternoon at 4:01pm. Yippee! Now I don’t have to go back to work for almost 5 weeks.

Summer School was a nice four weeks. I had a group of 16 second and third grade students.  We started off with a few caterpillars and lots and lots of eggs! Students got to see an amazing site–a brand new monarch caterpillar eating its way out of the shell! We observed this phenomena under the microscope, so students could see the little guy munching away. (I hope to have a digital microscope in September so that we can take enlarged photos of this happening!)

The caterpillars soon got fat on their exclusive diet of milkweed. Most of the milkweed came from our newly planted LAS garden. John, my amazing partner in crime, was key in getting my garden into the ground. We worked on many of his days off to till and dig the soil, prepare the beds and plant the milkweed.  Thank you so much, honey!

3 cats

small july 16 double j's

Dara, Julia, Robert and the whole gang were fascinated by the caterpillars. Arianna and Andrea wrote stories about them. Quentin drew diagrams of their life cycles. We watched as the cats grew and grew. As they entered their next stage of life, Vanessa seemed mesmerized as the caterpillars hung upside down in a letter J.

a thing of beauty

On the last day of summer school, the final stage of metamorphosis happened. I placed a ‘tower’ of chrysalides at each group in the classroom. Vanessa quietly and politely came to me and told me it was happening. We all rushed to the tower to observe a new butterfly as it pushed its way out of the now almost transparent chrysalis. Everyone held their breath as the legs came out, then the rest of the butterfly. Yippee! The smiles were on everyone’s faces as each butterfly made its way into the world.

We ended our summer school with new, magical beginnings.

Rather poetic, don’t you think?

muse

4 thoughts on “Summer School Monarchs!

  • January 31, 2011 at 5:55 pm
    Permalink

    Osiris looks shorter

    Reply
    • January 31, 2011 at 6:44 pm
      Permalink

      She was! She was much younger than she is now!

      Reply
  • January 31, 2011 at 5:54 pm
    Permalink

    Cool,I saw Osris and Julia

    Reply
  • August 5, 2009 at 5:18 am
    Permalink

    Awesome pictures. The last one of the student looking at the butterflies in the enclosure says it all…Great job Ms. Lenahan, Teacher of the Year!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Skip to toolbar