Dear Caterpillar Families,

It has been a busy week full of fun and preparation for our graduation ceremony on Saturday!  On Tuesday, we had a cozy day working on butterfly wings inside while we watched the rain fall outside.  Wow!  That was a lot of rain!  The Caterpillars loved watching the puddles get bigger and bigger.  Luckily, we were able to get outside for a few minutes before the deluge hit.  No one complained about the extra long Center Time, though, and it gave the Caterpillars plenty of time to focus on painting their butterfly wings.  On Wednesday, once the paint was dry, the Caterpillars were able to put some extra bling on them with jewels and glitter (lots of glitter!).  They are looking spectacular!

For snack on Wednesday, Vivian’s mom brought us some special Indian snacks to taste.  The vadas, which look like doughnuts but are not sweet, were especially delicious with coconut chutney!  The Caterpillars especially enjoyed the delicious mango lassi.  I was really happy to see some adventurous tasting going on!  We also took some time on Wednesday to meet with Pastor Amy and practice our song for graduation.  We’ll also spend a few minutes rehearsing today to make sure everyone knows the drill for Saturday.  It’s going to be awesome and I definitely recommend bringing some tissues, if only to lend to me once I start crying.  Graduation begins at 10:00 am;  please have your child in the Caterpillar room by 9:45.  After you drop them off with me, you can proceed to the sanctuary to find a seat!

Next week will be a busy one!  Tuesday is the long-awaited Pajama Day, and we’ll also eat some pancakes together to celebrate the end of the year.  Wednesday will be Water Day, and Thursday will be our last day of school!  It has truly been an amazing year, and I’m looking forward to having lots of fun with these kiddos next week.

See you all on Saturday morning! 

Ms. Katie

Dear Caterpillar Families,

This week we have been talking about Outer Space and the Solar System.  This is such a interesting topic to children; it really excites their imagination!  Just like many of the topics we’ve covered this year, the Caterpillars are using what they’ve already learned about other topics to put it all together.  Our discussion of the atmosphere during our weather unit a few weeks ago has been recalled, as has our previous discussion about gravity.  It is so exciting when the students can make these links themselves and truly feel ownership over their own learning!  We’ve also begun creating a book about space, using the step-by-step art techniques we’ve used many times this year.  It’s a project that will take several days, but your Caterpillar will have a finished product to bring home next week!

We’ve also been talking about the letter Yy this week.  We’re so close to the end of the alphabet!!  In preparation for conferences, I was so excited to see how many letters and sounds these boys and girls are able to identify.  This will be a great way for them to feel good about themselves as they begin Kinder.  A little bit of that good feeling about their abilities will go a long way!  Next week we’ll finish up with Zz, and the following week (the last week of school), we’ll do an alphabet overview. 

Next week we’ll be busy preparing for our graduation ceremony.  We’ll do some light rehearsing for the big event and take some time to decorate the butterfly wings that will be a part of the ceremony.  It’s going to be awesome!

Hope to see you all at the Garden Party on Saturday!

Ms. Katie

Dear Caterpillar Families,

Our topic this week has been Ocean but, frankly, this has been one of those weeks where the curriculum topic has been secondary to the realities of our classroom, and we’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by “teachable moments.” 

On Tuesday, many of the Caterpillars took leave from Grace Garden to attend Kindergarten Round-Ups at their new schools.  When I arrived to school late Tuesday morning after taking the time out to sign up my own son for Kindergarten, I was thrilled to see the happy faces of the Caterpillars as they bounced into the classroom  Not a one seemed anxious or unsure about their experience, and couple were actually bubbling over with excitement and eagerness to tell me and their friends about their glimpse into the world of Kindergarten.  Parents are often torn about whether or not their child is ready to move on from Pre-K, and it’s a joy and relief to see that, without a doubt, they are!

As if the excitement of Tuesday’s round-up were not enough for the Caterpillars this week, Wednesday brought the anticipated return of a former classmate!  We were so happy to welcome back a former GG family who’ve returned from a year abroad.  As our new friend slipped right into the routine without missing a beat, she chatted with her pals and shared stories of her time away.   At one point, a student came up and said he’d like to show her the apple tree and explain to her how it works.  Later, I saw another student taking her on a “tour” of the classroom.  Clearly, these Caterpillars know the ropes in our classroom!

We also managed to talk a bit about the ocean this week.  We read a couple of fun books, Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae and Over in the Ocean: In a Coral Reef by Marianne Berkes, and shared stories about our own personal experiences with the ocean and/or sea creatures.  Our letter of the week was Xx and we discovered that there aren’t many words that begin with X, but we could think of some that had X in them. 

It’s hard to believe it’s the last month of school, and it’s going to be an extremely busy one!  Please be aware of the upcoming events:
                                                           
    Monday, May 7th - Conferences

    Saturday, May 11th - Garden Party!  Hope to see you all there!

    Saturday, May 19th - Caterpillar Graduation

    Tuesday, May 22nd - Pajama Day

    Wednesday, May 23rd - Water Day

    Thursday, May 24th - Last Day of School

Whew!  I’m exhausted just typing it all up! ;)

Have a restful weekend,
Ms. Katie

Dear Parents,

Happy Earth Week!  This week we’ve been talking about our beautiful planet.  I’m always amazed during the unit on Earth at how far popular consciousness has evolved since I was a kid.  In the Caterpillar class, all of the children are already well-versed in what they can do to help the planet, whereas when we were kids, the Three Rs were virtually unheard of.  Thank goodness, today’s children can’t even imagine somebody tossing trash out of a moving car or into a stream, and seem to have a “default” setting for helping the environment.  If their attitude is any measure, our planet will have wonderful caretakers in the future. 

My favorite book to read to kids about the importance of protecting the environment is The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry.  It is a beautifully illustrated book, set in the Amazon Rainforest.  Two men walk into the rainforest and survey a huge tree, making plans to chop it down.  Unbeknownst to the man charged with wielding the axe, a whole collection of native animals are watching.  When the man gets tired from trying to chop the tree down and falls asleep against its trunk, the animals take turns coming close and whispering to him in his sleep.  Each animal pleads with the man to leave the tree as it is and explains why the animals’ existence depends on it.  Finally, the man wakes up, surrounded by rainforest creatures, and makes a decision about the tree.  This is such a great read-aloud book because it allows the reader to take on lots of different voices for the animals, much to the delight of the listeners.  It is also a very spare book, and manages to get its message across with very little “preaching.”

In Chapel on Wednesday, Pastor Amy echoed the theme of the week beautifully as she took the children on an imaginary journey into outer space.  Our planet was too littered, she said, and we needed to find a new planet to live on.  However, all of the other planets we “saw” were not quite right:  too hot, too cold, too gassy, no water, etc., etc.  In the end, the little space travelers decided to return to Earth and keep it clean because it’s the only planet we have. 

Have a beautiful weekend,
Ms. Katie

Dear Caterpillar Families,

This week our topic in the Caterpillar room has been Weather, and we’ve had no shortage of beautiful weather to inspire us!  We’ve been spending as much time outdoors as possible, even eating snack and lunch on the playground, which has given us lots of opportunity to observe and experience cool breezes, warm rays of the sun, shifting clouds and humid mornings.  No rain or heavy wind to speak of this week, but what we missed in reality we made up for in conversation!  It turns out the topics most Caterpillars wanted to discuss were thunder and lightning, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods.  So with the help of some amazing books like Down Came the Rain by Franklyn M. Branley and Weather Words and What They Mean by Gail Gibbons, we discovered what the difference between and tornado and a hurricane is, how many different types of clouds there are, and what makes lightning and thunder.  I am always a little wary of spending too much time talking about thunderstorms for fear of instilling a phobia, but none of the Caterpillars seemed to mind the topic at all.  In fact, all 10 of them answered “no” to Wednesday’s Question of the Day:  Do you get scared by thunderstorms?

In addition to our topic of the week, we’ve continued making huge strides in reading!  This week we read the decodable reader Gus the Bug.  For this and other decodable readers we’ve looked at, we follow a predictable outline for reading:  first, I make a list of all the words that are in the book, out of order and out of context.  We look at each word, count how many letters it has, and then attempt to sound it out.  We also identify which of them are Popcorn Words.  After that, we look at the words collectively and try to guess what the story might be about.  The Caterpillars are getting really good at this!  At first, they would offer ideas that had nothing to do with the words in our list, but now they are really thinking about what would “make sense” for our list of words.  Then I pass the booklets out and we look at the pictures and use our reading fingers to track the words as we read them, stopping along the way to make sure the words we read match the pictures.  Finally, I send the kids off to practice reading to each other and record how many people they read to.  After a few repetitions of this routine, the Caterpillars are rocking it!  Check your folders if you haven’t already seen this book come home and ask your child to read it to you!  You’ll be amazed! 

Parents, the next several weeks will be extremely busy ones!  In addition to Parent/Teacher Conferences (May 7th) and Graduation (May 19th), the Grace Garden teaching staff would like to invite you to a Garden Party on Saturday, May 12th, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. on the Grace Garden playground.  You will not want to miss this fundraising event!  We will have Joe McDermott there to entertain the whole family, refreshments for sale, and beautiful candid photos available for purchase.  All proceeds will go towards new equipment for the playground. It will be a wonderful way to spend an evening together as families and to help our Garden grow! 

Next week our topic will be Earth Day and Recycling.  Have a great weekend!

Ms. Katie

Dear Caterpillar Families,

It has been a relatively quiet and calm week in the Caterpillar room as we have been
talking about transportation.  I always like to start the transportation unit by having the
kids brainstorm as many modes of transportation as possible.  After all of their ideas
were exhausted (and that did take quite awhile!), I asked them about their feet.  Are
your feet a way to get from point A to point B?  How about your bicycle?  How about a
skateboard or scooter?  My point in broadening their definition of transportation is to get
them thinking about the way that goods move from one place to another, and that some modes of transportation might “make more sense” than others, depending on what it is that needs to be transported.   For example, does it “make sense” to use an airplane to do your grocery shopping at H.E.B.?  How about walking or riding a scooter to get to Sea World in San Antonio?  It is a great way to introduce the Caterpillars to the idea of commerce and the marketplace.  They love thinking about all of the trucks and ships and airplanes that carry goods like toys and bikes and food from places unknown!

Since I have the benefit of having a little transportation aficionado of my own at home, I
have literally dozens of transportation books to share with the Caterpillars!  Some of our
very favorites this week were Trucks Roll by George Ella Lyon, Truck Talk- Rhymes on
Wheels by Bobbi Katz, Smash! Mash! Crash! There Goes the Trash! by Barbara
Odanaka, Trashy Town by Andrea Griffing Zimmerman, and all of the books in the Tonka Truck series, If I Could Drive a... (Cement Mixer, Tow Truck, Fire Truck, etc., etc...). 
Another one that the Caterpillars enjoyed immensely was If I Built A Car by Chris Van
Dusen.  They loved using their imaginations to design their own personal dream car! 

Following up on our focus on friendship over the last several weeks, we also read a
great little book about feelings and “forgiving and forgetting.”  The Berenstain Bears Hug and Make Up showed us that, sometimes, through nobodyʼs fault, people can just feel grumpy and out-of-sorts.  When this happens, it can lead to people acting out in
unfriendly ways, but more importantly it prevents people from being able to concentrate
on their own activities!  In the story, Brother and Sister Bear couldnʼt even enjoy playing
on the playground with their friends because they were so steamed at each other, and
Mother Bear didnʼt even realize that the magazine she was trying to read was upside
down because she was so distracted by her grumpy mood!  As a class, we talked about
ways to calm your body down when youʼre feeling grumpy.  I shared with the class a
breathing technique that helps me calm down when Iʼm upset:  you pretend that you are
“drinking” the air into your lungs through an imaginary straw in your nose.  The
Caterpillars thought the image of a straw sticking out of their noses was hilarious, but I
observed that each one of them was getting good, deep breaths during the exercise. 
Whatever works! 

Itʼs been a really fun week and I look forward to next week when we talk all about Weather.

Have a great weekend,

Ms. Katie

Dear Families,

The biggest news in our classroom is the daily change of our resident caterpillars!  When we got to school on Tuesday, we were all surprised to see how fat they had gotten over the weekend.  They had eaten up almost all of their green goop food in the bottom of the cup, and there was much “waste” to observe also (prompting a delightful “everyone poops” conversation).  By Wednesday, each caterpillar had found its way to the top of the jar and hung itself upside down.  Although I had to move it to avoid accidental jostling, the kids were still able to observe the caterpillars wriggling around as their transformation began!  By Thursday morning, the chrysalises were hardened and had taken on a greenish-golden sheen.  Iʼm hoping this timeline bodes well for our butterflies to emerge next week while weʼre at school!  Although still wonderful and miraculous, itʼs not as much fun if it happens while no one is there. 

Our ladybug larva are also doing well. Although a few of them didnʼt make it (prompting
another interesting discussion about life and death in the natural world), the remaining
ones seem to be thriving! After reading Ladybugs: Red, Fiery and Bright by Mia Posada,
the students were able to easily identify which stage our ladybugs were in.  They also
drew comparisons between the life cycle stages of the ladybugs and the life cycle
stages of the caterpillars.  The kids have a great understanding now of the term life
cycle, and love to repeat the stages over and over and over and over and over.... Itʼs
become almost like a chant in our room these past few days:  Egg, Larva, Pupa, Adult,
Egg, Larva, Pupa, Adult!

On Wednesday we reached an important milestone in our daily routine.  It was the
100th day of school!  Each day during calendar, we add another straw to our “keeping
track” chart.  When we get to 10, we have a Ten Celebration and the ten ones
“magically” turn into one group of 10.  Finally we got to see ten groups of ten “magically”
turn into one group of 100.  While itʼs just an introduction, Iʼm hoping that this visual
representation of place value will stay with the Caterpillars and help them as they tackle
the subject more intensely in Kindergarten. 

As we continue our focus on healthy friendships, there are a couple of books that have
been really great to jump start our discussions.  How Full is Your Bucket? by Mary
Reckmeyer uses the analogy of an invisible bucket that can be filled or emptied
depending on how people are treated.  The students enjoyed role-playing different ways
to fill each othersʼ buckets.  Another book that weʼve read is Simonʼs Hook: A Story
About Teases and Put-Downs by Karen Gedig Burnett.  This is another great book to
help kids really visualize the concept.  Simonʼs grandmother reminds him that he
doesnʼt need to “bite” when someone puts a hook in front of him by teasing or putdowns.  “Just swim on by and stay a free fish!” 

Have a wonderful weekend!
Ms. Katie

Dear Caterpillar Families,

Welcome back from Spring Break!  I hope you all had as much fun over your break as I did!  This week, we’ve been talking about insects and were so happy to welcome some new “friends” into our classroom:  caterpillars and ladybug larvae!  As the next couple of weeks unfold, we will have front-row seats for a grand metamorphosis!  The kids will have plenty of opportunity to observe the life cycle stages and document them in their journals.  I just hope that the butterflies wait until we are all at school to emerge!

As we were talking about caterpillars on Wednesday morning, I was so thrilled to hear the one of the students say, “Hey!  We’re caterpillars too!  And soon, we’ll come out of our cocoons and fly off to Kindergarten!”  It is so affirming to see these kids come up with this stuff on their own!  They really seem to have an understanding that they are on the brink of a grand metamorphosis themselves, and their excitement about what lies ahead for them gives me goosebumps.  How lucky I feel to have my own front-row seat for yet another transformation. 

Have a beautiful weekend!

With love,
Ms. Katie

Hello, Caterpillar Families!

Spring has definitely sprung in the Caterpillar room!  Weʼve been talking about Spring
and the other three seasons all week.  We made cherry blossom paintings with our
fingerprints, listened carefully and followed directions to make beautiful irises, and used
colored glue and Fruit Loops cereal to make vibrant rainbows. 

Since our letter of the week was Qq, we spent some time talking about this quirky letter. 
The Caterpillars enjoyed writing Qs, especially lowercase ones!  We talked about how
lowercase q starts like lowercase a, but then it keeps on going and has a monkey tail. 
Capital Q was delightfully easy for these guys:  “Itʼs just an O but with a short diagonal
line coming out of it!”  Coming up with a list of Qq words was a bit tricky, but we did
manage to put up at least a few.  A few very attentive Caterpillars suggested we put
words like cupid, cube, and cute.  When I told them that those words actually begin with
the letter Cc, they were shocked!  “But I can hear ʻQʼ at the beginning!”  These
Caterpillars are doing what good readers do:  listening closely to the sounds that make
up words!  So exciting. 

This week we also spent some time reviewing the idea of being a good friend and how
to recognize bullying behavior.  It can be tricky talking about bullying with this age group
because itʼs so hard for them to think about bullying as being something other than
hurtful to their body.  We talked a lot about the difference between hurt bodies and hurt
feelings, and concluded that itʼs possible to be hurt by someone even if they never lay a
hand on you.  We practiced being Bucket Fillers by giving each other compliments and
kindnesses and pledged to avoid being Bucket Dippers by saying unkind things to our
friends.  It was a great exercise and wonderful to hear the Caterpillars showering love
upon each other. 

I hope everyone has a wonderfully relaxing Spring Break!  When we get back to school
after the break, our unit will be Insects!  Lots of creepy, crawly fun ahead!

With love,
Ms. Katie