Post Vacation Science & Earth Day

I hate to say it, but boy did this week feel long! May have been because we got back so late Sunday night from our honeymoon cruise (I know you feel sooo bad for me haha!) But I must say I'm happy it's Friday!

I'm linking up with Doodlebug's 5 for Friday on my first post in about 2 weeks...

As I'm sure you know, Earth Day was on Tuesday! It was supposed to rain during the day Tuesday (it didn't!) so our grade level took the kiddos out Monday and cleaned up the school grounds. Between the 3 classes we had 3-4 full garbage bags after only about 20-30 minutes of walking around the grounds. They were very proud of themselves! Unfortunately, I had my phone with me to take pictures, but completely forgot in my effort to make sure we all stayed together, whoops!

Continuing with the Earth Day theme, we spent a good hour on Tuesday dedicated to recycling. We watched the Earth Day brain pop video on conservation. It was actually the free video of the day so even if you aren't lucky enough to have a subscription in your school, next year I'm sure they will have a free Earth Day video again! I read a simple recycling book to them and then they partner read this year's Scholastic News magazine about Earth Day. This year it focused on trash getting into rivers and other water supplies. With the information they learned from the 3 sources, the kiddos made brochures about recycling. The brochures answered questions such as: Why should we recycle? Where does the trash go? What can be made with recycled material? etc.

 We've been working on letter writing, and have switched gears to persuasive letter writing. I took the opportunity of Earth Day falling the week we started persuasive letters to have the kiddos write a letter to our school convincing our community of students, teachers and staff to recycle. The kiddos did a fantastic job giving detailed reasons why it is important to recycle. 

I ended up combining our brochures and letters to create a "Can we persuade you to recycle?" display outside of our classroom.

 Our caterpillars arrived this week! Last year, first grade did caterpillars/butterflies and second grade did millipedes, pill bugs, moss and some other plants that we made terrariums out of. I must admit, I'm a little more excited about butterflies :) The kiddos went wild when they got to see their caterpillars for the first time yesterday. We had to have a talk about not naming them and not saying any certain cup is "theirs" since not all the caterpillars will make it to butterflies... which caused some sad little faces, but better than tears if someone's caterpillar named "Cattie" died!

I just can't end this post without a few honeymoon pictures. True it was 6 months after getting married, but it was worth every second of the wait. We went to Honduras, Belize and 2 ports in Mexico. Every port was beautiful and we couldn't have asked for a better week!