Can't you tell it's spring?

What a wonderfully, wet spring it has been here in Austin, TX!  We have gotten so much rain that I have considered building an ark.

Well, spring time has been blossoming in my little kindergarten classroom.  We learned about insects a few weeks ago.  We learned about pollination by rubbing our fingers on Cheetos and spreading the pollen (Cheetos powder) onto flowers that were around the classroom.

Check out my sweet kiddos on Twitter with their self-made butterfly wings and antennae as props while pollinating!

We also wrote poems about bugs and insects all week in writer's workshop, illustrated them and  practiced reading them to our friends.

We shared our learning of the insect's body parts by creating salt-dough insects and labeling them.

It wouldn't be spring without hatching chicks!

During the incubation period, we added a picture from my Chicks unit to our calendar of what the inside of the egg looked like and "hatched" the egg from the Learning Resources Chick Life Cycle Exploration Kit.

"Chick" out these little spring time units in my store:

 

By the way, I had a little surprise this month...

I was honored as the winner for Elementary Leadership for the state of Texas.  Here I am with my award.  Click on the picture to see the news story about it.  I was able to earn my school $10,000 because of this honor

"Chick" us out!

Happy Friday, everyone!  We have been anxiously awaiting our chicks in our classroom and they arrived yesterday and a few more today!  We have six so far and a few more were pipping when I left school today.

Before these cuties arrived, we predicted how many would hatch with this little prediction chart.

Of course much of the week was spent learning the life cycle and using things from my unit on TPT.

I used the vocabulary cards to make this life cycle chart.

My cuties also created a life cycle puzzle from the unit.

Yesterday was the due date of our chicks, so we made these little hatching chicks and I gave my cuties a little egg with a tiny chick inside for them to keep.

Thanks for "chicking" out our chicks!