Butterfly!

       My butterfly is officially a butterfly! I came back from school on Thursday to find that it was out of its chrysalis. Below are some pictures of it. The blue mesh sponge contains sugar water, its food. When its wings are folded up, it would camouflage with bushes very well, but the other of its wings are actually orange!

 

      My roommate and I let the butterfly go the next morning since its cage was so small. It was fun to watch this small larva grow, turn into a chrysalis, and then become a butterfly. I would definitely love to do this in my class someday. It can teach some many different things, and it would be fun to do a whole unit about butterflies and their life cycles.

    Speaking of units, I am currently still in the process of working on my thematic unit about prosthetics. I'm teaching it to my fifth graders all day on Tuesday, which I am really nervous about. It will be the first day I have taught everything where I wrote all of the lessons. Below is a bulletin board I put up to encourage curiosity. We will be adding more to it this week, but I thought putting the title and some pictures up would get them to start talking and thinking about it. After I teach about it, they will have a project that they have to complete, where they design a model of a prosthetic. I'm still figuring out how to make this manageable for them. In the meantime, have a good week! I will let you know how Tuesday goes as soon as I can, but I have to take the Praxis next Saturday and have a large presentation the next week, so it might be a little while before I can blog about it.

Chrysalis

My larva is now officially a chrysalis (has been for several days actually). Today, my roommate and I moved it from the plastic container she came in to a small cage I got.

Left: The larva on its last crawl to the top. She was so big that even when it was curved, it did not fit across the top of the container! Right: The chrysalis hanging in its container.

     On Tuesday I get to teach a science lesson about arm muscles. The students are going to build a model of an arm, showing the biceps. It's straight from the FOSS curriculum, but I'm very excited to teach it. Unfortunately, I have not seen much science taught because the days that I come always have an extra thing (library and DARE), so science gets left out (it's not on the ISTEP in fifth grade). Have a good week!

Growing Larva

    The larva (butterfly necklace) I got at the NSTA conference last Friday from Carolina Biological Supply has been growing like weeds! It is three to four times the size it started as. It spends most of its time eating and molting.

         March 30                                          April 2                                                  April 4

     Today, I woke up to discover that my larva is being to form its chrysalis! At first, her webbing was only on the sides, and I started to worry that she would try to hang from the sides. A few hours later, I looked at her again, and the larva was getting closer to hanging from the paper at the top (like the sheet I recieved said she should).

     I'm so excited to see her turn into a butterfly. Hopefully, her chrysalis will be hardened enough for me to be able to safely bring her back to college with me. Also, I still haven't officially picked a name for it, so if you have suggestions, please let me know!

If you have any ideas for my thematic unit about prosthetics or any advice about thematic units in general, I would love to hear them. Have a good weekend! Happy Easter!