Four Legged Visitors

We have had a couple of interesting visitors to our classroom this week! On Monday, one of my students brought in a container with two salamanders! Today, another student brought his pet guinea pig, Brownie, to spend the day in second grade! Besides my love for animals, this has been great because we are learning about animal groups and other cool topics about animals in Science right now. Nothing better than the real thing!

Here is a shot of our butterfly tent which houses our two swallowtail chrysalises. The second picture is a shot of one of those chrysalis. Isn't the camouflage amazing? Another interesting fact about the swallowtail is that if you get a late caterpillar, it will probably stay in its chrysalis all winter and not hatch until spring. I wonder what we have? Late or early?

In Social Studies, today we talked about different kinds of resources we can use to research a topic. This was particularly cool because one of my students brought in a seed pod to show us. He let us cut it open to find the seeds. We then got really curious about what plant it was from and what it was called. So we used our resources! Believe it or not the internet didn't help and we resorted to asking a another teacher if she knew what it was. She produced a plant and seed book that helped us identify the pod! It was a "wild cucumber"! And that my friends is how to use your resources! Perfect life lesson to accompany our school lesson! Love it when that happens.

Great Start!

We've had an awesome start to the 2013 - 2014 school year at Greater Portland Christian School!

Our school has had a face lift and looks great!

In second grade, we are hatching two Swallowtail butterflies. The first should emerge from its chrysalis any day now and the second in about a week or so. I will post pictures! I am extra excited because I usually hatch Painted Lady or Monarch butterflies, so this is a new species to me!