A preschooler is patient...

We have been patiently awaiting the transformation of our monarch caterpillars. We have watched them transform from small caterpillars to their now, 5th instar stage (the largest they get!) This week a few of them began their journey to the top of our netted cage, where they will form their chrysalis and transform into butterflies. This times makes for weekend anticipation awaiting what progress has come while we are home. The last few weeks we have continued our study, looking at their life cycle, migration as well as the endangerment of the species currently.

As the caterpillar moves through the 5 instar stages, they grow bigger in size. Each size range represents a stage. We have spent some time measuring a few of our caterpillars, and determining their stage. We know they keep getting bigger because they keep eating the milkweed!

One morning I asked the question "What does endangered mean?" We had a classroom discussion about what the word might be. Many children thought the word means there is a fire, you might be falling of a cliff, or that you are not safe. I then asked "What does it mean if an animal is endangered?" Our ideas included:

• when they run away

• when thunder happens

• fire

• when they are scared

We watched a few videos about what it means to be endangered, and concluded that endangered does mean that the animal is not safe, but they are not safe because they are missing something from their habitat (the place where there have food, water and shelter.) We determined what the habitat is for the caterpillar, the milkweed plant and that when there are not enough of these plants the species becomes endangered. Some of the videos also talked about how we can help endangered species. We talked about how we can help the monarch caterpillars and butterflies and some students gave great ideas including picking up litter, helping their habitat and planting milkweed!

In the next few weeks as we patiently await the monarch transformation we will focus on all things fall. We prepped some of these explorations this week with pumpkin washing, a classroom favorite!

As well, we enjoyed collecting leaves on our muddy boots walk on Friday!

Questions you can ask your child

• What color leaves did you see/collect on Friday?

• Where do the monarch butterflies fly to when they leave us?

• Do you remember the song(s) you are singing in music? (Wednesday)

• What games did you play in P.E? (Thursday)

Fall fun outside!

And of course lots of play throughout these last few weeks!