Monday, April 27th, 2008
Our caterpillars arrived by post this morning. We are thrilled. We noticed that they came with their own food, so we don't need to gather leaves and flowers for them. The food looks like a brownish grey lump of hard jelly, it looks awful but the caterpillars must like it!
We named our caterpillars Colourdy, Crawly, Floppy, Patch and Poppy. It is hard to tell which one is which. We can't wait to see them grow. We will leave them at school where it is quite warm, and we will take great care not to shake their container.
One week later: Tuesday, May 5th. Haven't they grown a lot in a week. They have also make lots of webs in the container, and we can see at least 10 (2 each) skins that they have discarded as they grow bigger.
One week later: Monday, May 11th. The caterpillars are so big now. We are wondering when they will make their cocoons.
Exciting News: Today, Thursday, May 14th, our caterpillars have begun to hang off the top of their pot. We think they will be in their cocoons very soon.
Friday, May 15th. One of the caterpillars is in his (or her) cocoon.
We think the others will change very soon. Not sure about one caterpillar who is just lying on the bottom of the container and not trying to change.
Monday, May 18th. All 5 caterpillars are in their cocoons (although one is not hanging from the top)
. Teacher cut them into individual parts and stuck them onto some card. She made a special holder for the cocoon that wasn't stuck to the top. Now they are all safely in their pop up butterfly garden. We wonder how long it will take for them to turn into butterflies?
Our first butterfly emerged yesterday, on Sunday, May 31st. We think that it is Poppy. Today, Monday, June 1st, 3 more butterflies emerged (Colourdy, Crawly and Patch). We are now just waiting for one (Floppy).They like to drink sugared water (which we left on a tissue for them), and eat fresh flowers (we have given them dandelions). In case they are really hungry, we also left a slice of orange, banana, nectarine and kiwi. We think they will really enjoy the fruit. Now we have to wait for about 2 or 3 days until their wings grow stronger. Then we will release them to go and start their own families.
We are having fun learning about stories from around the world. At the moment we are hearing lots about the story of Daedalus and Icarus from Greece. We learned that Icarus didn't listen to his Dad and he flew too close to the sun. This caused the wax on the wings he made to melt, and he fell into the sea. Today we painted nice pictures of Icarus too close to the sun. 
We are learning lots about flying these days. We made kites on Monday and tried flying them. It is harder to fly kites than it looks, but we had lots of fun with them.
It was a great chance to talk about bugs, and to practice our sorting, all at the same time.
The class got to ask questions about whether the object is rough/smooth, hard/soft, warm/cold, where we could find the object and what the object could be used for. The child holding the feeley bag answered the questions and gave hints if it was too hard to guess. It is hard to guess objects using only our sense of touch.
some focus on reading (red folder games)
and some are language games (look and find lotto and the shopping game). They are all great fun.
Well done too, especially to Ms.Cunningham for all her help with the music, to Len for the fantastic sets, to Anne for our great make up, to Ms.Carleton, Ms. Long, Ms. Hynes, Maura and Mrs. Smith for your help and support, and to all our parents for the wonderful costumes. It was truly a magnificent team effort. Míle buíochas díbh go léir.
Teacher found 18 worms in her garden last night, and she brought them to school to show us. We got a wormery ready for them. We put layers of soil and sand in the wormery, then added the worms (they were all sizes, shapes and colours), then some grass and leaves for them to eat.
We know that worms don't like light. We saw them trying to get to the bottom of the wormery as soon as we put them in. (The bottom is safer for them, further away from birds). We hope that the worms will make tunnels through the soil and sand, so that we can see what way worms live in the soil. We might even try making our own wormeries at home.
One of our girls showed us how to make strange sounds with a balloon. By pulling the neck of the balloon when the air is escaping, the sound it emits is very funny. Teacher showed us how to make strange sounds with plastic, paper and grass, and we all tried making sounds with straws. 
We found out that if you cut a straw when you are blowing it, that the note it makes gets higher as the straw is cut.
They are very easy to make - all you need is string and 2 yoghurt cartons. One end of the string is put through a hole in the carton, and tied. The other end of the string is tied through another carton. If you want to talk through the telephone, you must keep the string tight. Otherwise the sound waves can't travel from one yoghurt pot to the other. We really enjoyed learning about sound today.