Monarchs and Milkweed

This week flew by! Last week we welcomed a handful of 1st instar monarch caterpillars (the smallest stage of them all.) To care foe these little insects we found that they needed one important item to survive... milkweed! Milkweed is the only plant that the caterpillar eats, and with all the growing they will do, we need lots of milkweed! Last week we supplied a few bunches of stems, but through the weekend the caterpillars munched and the leaves also began to dry. We knew we needed to supply them with fresh milkweed this week. We went on a "Milkweed hunt" (though this will be something we do every week for the next few weeks!)

We took a walk out to the meadow and began hunting. We checked the shady side of the hill, no luck, we walked through the woods, still no luck. Then we came to a sunny trail in the middle of the meadow and there was a huge cluster of milkweed! When we cut the milkweed a white sap fell from the bottom of the stem. The white sap reminded us of something...milk! Hannah and I cut the stems and we talked about the sap being poisonous. I asked "what does poisonous mean?" and many children responded in, "it means we can't eat it" We talked about how no other animal or insect eats the milkweed because of the sap, but that these caterpillars are not harmed by the plant.

We transferred our new milkweed into the caterpillars habitat, and next week we will hunt again for fresh milkweed!

While we were on our walk I collected a few of the milkweed pods. On Thursday we opened the pods and investigated what was inside! Small brown seeds with hair on the ends!

We read Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost and Leonid Gore. The book talks about the migration and life cycle of the monarch as well as the life cycle of the milkweed plant. We pretended our breath was the wind and watched as the little seed took off in flight! Later in the day we took the seeds outside and children who wanted to could help our seeds take flight!

We are still experimenting and recapping our color knowledge! We are adding to our own canvases and mixing new colors together! We have also started painting our classroom rainbow, a wooden rainbow that was gifted to us by the Hemlock classroom!

We celebrated Leahs birthday this week! Happy birthday Leah!!

We also went to our first assembly on Friday! Assemblies are hosted monthly by the 8th grade, and though they are used to enhance the 8th graders public speaking skills, we also enjoy the community time as it brings together the whole school with fun facts, riddles and jokes and other exciting components!

And as always, there was lots of time for play!