We learned so much about spiders; even things we were surprised by! The last photo in this week’s bunch will tell you all about it.
 
We made tin foil and pipe cleaner spiders, a human spider web and foam spiders that had two strings of yarn attached to the back of the spiders so they could “climb”. We also threaded yarn through holes in a paper plate to make a spider web for their tiny pipe cleaner spiders. We even used our letter construction pieces to build spiders.
 
When we weren’t learning about and making spider related crafts, we were making beaded bracelets and necklaces, building and playing with Lego, and playing a dice rolling game.
 
We spent lots of time out and about; “rock climbing”, exploring NoseHill Park, picking up lilac petals from multiple places, and had fun out in the field shooting Bella’s ball blaster for her and doing tricks with soccer balls.
 
The kids and I were very fortunate to come across numbers that were spray painted in the field. This was great for impromptu math/gross motor work. And, oh my goodness, where they ever a lot of mosquitos in the field! The kids decided they would all run from one soccer goal post to the other, not knowing that they would awaken so many mosquitos! The kids and I definitely got our exercise by running away and dancing the “mosquito dance”.

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there! 

The kids were busy this week getting ready for Father's Day. They were very proud of the gifts they made. They were creative, practiced their name writing and how to hold their writing utensils like a crocodile. 

Speaking of crocodiles... when we weren't working on Father's Day gifts, we were learning about crocodiles and alligators. We learned many facts we didn't know before! It was quite interesting to learn about the difference between the two.

The kids practiced building letters with wooden pieces and magnetic pieces, and played letter finding and matching games.

The kids love finding flowers and insects. There was a lot of ladybug finding and dandelion picking happening. We really do love exploring and finding new life in nature. I was instructed to take pictures of all the flowers they found on our adventures, which were quite a few! Over the past few weeks we have been watching as new flowers emerge and researching them online to see what they are called.

Bugs. Bugs. Bugs. This seems to be what the kids are really interested in these days. We have moved on from butterflies and ants to ladybugs and beetles (we learned a ladybug is a beetle actually). These kids will be little ecologists by the end of the summer!
 
We had a lot of fun learning about different types of beetles such as Dung beetles, Rhinoceros beetles and ground beetles, and where they live, what they eat, and their natural behaviours. It’s always exciting when they get to see what we are learning about in the real world. We were fortunate to come across ladybugs, worms, a caterpillar, always ants, and even a few ground beetles. Exploring nature has been one of the highlights of our warm spring days.
 
Together we made tiny bugs out of buttons, pipe cleaners and hot glue. We also made button bugs, paper beetle hand puppets and bug hotels out of pinecones, dandelions, twigs, etc.
 
The kids worked hard on their block colour patterns, letter building with our letter construction kit and building faces our of rocks to show varying emotions.
 
We also had fun jumping on our hop scotch, hula hooping, throwing frisbees, colouring the sidewalk and climbing rocks. The kids ran through water and got sprayed with the hose. What a great morning it was for a little spray down after taking the Bella dog for a run!

This week was all about ladybugs. The kids were lucky enough to have found a few of them on multiple occasions. They sure do love holding them. We have learned so much about ladybugs. Some of the facts we learned are that they have 6 legs just like butterflies do, they do not see very well, they use their antenna to smell, taste and feel, they have a similar lifecycle to butterflies, the eggs they lay look like jellybeans, ladybugs come in a few different colours but all come out of their pupa stage as the colour yellow with no spots yet. Unfortunately the photo of our ladybug information has disappeared. 
 
We explored NoseHill Park a bunch this week. The kids really loved finding ants, roly polys, worms, spiders, beetles, and any type of bug, We discussed what could be living in the holes they saw in the ground, what the bees do with the nectar from the flowers, and why many plants are not around in the winter.
 
The kids were so excited to see if the Tipi we made was still there. Unfortunately, it was apart on the ground, so everyone decided to pick up the pieces and make a new fort. What a great opportunity to be engineers; conceptualizing their fort design, working together and problem-solving, to only name a few reasons why fort building is such a great learning experience. We really explored weight, height, length, and stability.
 
We had a lot of fun doing a baking soda and vinegar science experiment where we put vinegar in a bottle and baking soda in a balloon. After making sure the balloon was tight to the bottle, we turned our balloons upside down to allow the baking soda to drop into the bottle. It was very exciting to watch the balloon blow up because of the chemical reaction.
 
Some other activities we did include; using crayons to build letters that have straight lines, reading (we are really into our Magic Tree House chapter books and reading to each other), making puzzles, building their names, and matching colours using tiny “clippers”, as they call them.