(Our second caterpillar has gone to live in Kookaburra's room as their caterpillar had an unfortunate accident.)
Our chrysalis has slightly darkened now in the centre which means it is beginning to transform into a butterfly. We were very excited today to see our caterpillar move to a twig and test it out to see if it's safe and sturdy enough. We know this means it is preparing to transform to the chrysalis stage very soon. However, after school the caterpillar returned to a leaf and appeared to be having a rest. We can hardly wait to see what happens tomorrow! (Our second caterpillar has gone to live in Kookaburra's room as their caterpillar had an unfortunate accident.)
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Congratulations to our Rosella Principal's Award recipients for this last term of the year. We are very proud of you and hope you enjoyed your special afternoon tea at recess today with Mr Connor. The awards were presented to our children at today's K-6 Assembly.
Today Rosella enjoyed their ‘I Wonder Who Thursday’ morning after clues were revealed to the class yesterday about this week's mystery reader. We wondered who it could be! Our mystery reader read the classic tale 'The Gingerbread Man' which was our mystery reader's favourite book when she was little! All the children loved listening to this favourite story. Thanks so much to one of our mums who volunteered to be Rosella's mystery reader today. There was a very proud son in Rosella today! We wonder who will visit us next week? We were so excited to see our caterpillar as a chrysalis for the first time this morning. Our other two caterpillars have grown so much over the weekend, so they may make their transformation very soon too! We hope so! We weren't there to witness it, however our caterpillar will now be a chrysalis at school. There are two things that would have happened just before our caterpillar changed into a chrysalis. First its antennas would have gone all droopy and shriveled up and second, the caterpillar would have looked like it was doing sit-ups. Its metamorphosis would then have happened very quickly! The caterpillar would have started to shed its skin and and the wet chrysalis would be moving around. The last part is very tricky because the chrysalis does not want to fall off the twig. The chrysalis has get rid of the old caterpillar skin and the clasper that was holding on to the silk button and put in its own hook (cremaster) into the silk to keep hanging on. It would have twisted and turned to do this. The chrysalis, or pupa, would now be dry and hard. It's a shame we didn't see this happen at school, but here are some photos and videos of a past Kinder caterpillar. We also have two more caterpillars growing and hopefully we will see their transformation to chrysalis at school. After school our caterpillar stopped spinning its silk button. It moved forward and then turned around on the twig, put its back part over the silk button and grabbed it with its back claspers. Here is some video from this afternoon. The next step is the caterpillar will very slowly and carefully test if it can release all its legs/claspers from the twig to make its J shape, only hanging on with the back one. One by one, the caterpillar will let go and then let itself drop! This unfortunately will have happened this evening while we are all at home. Here are some photos and video of a previous Kinder caterpillar and how it happens. Our caterpillar had a rest after finding a safe spot on the twig and it started spinning a silk 'button' to keep itself attached to the twig when it changes to a chrysalis. The silk comes out in a fine thread from its spinneret under its head and the caterpillar weaves by moving its head from side to side. This took a few hours today. Look closely and you can see the small white silk ball under its head. Rosella were very excited to see this happening today. Here is video of our caterpillar beginning to spin its silk button today. Below is the silk button just about finished! All our caterpillars were happily munching away as usual this morning. However after sport our first hatched caterpillar had moved over to the sturdy twig placed there yesterday. It had finished eating, emptied its stomach and had been wandering around testing the twigs for a secure place to turn into chrysalis. It tests the twig by twisting and bending its body over and over again. We were very excited to see that it had moved away from the milkwood leaves! This is footage from a couple of years ago of a Kinder caterpillar testing the twig to make sure it was safe. This would have been happening while we were out at sport; when we came back to the room our caterpillar had found a safe place and was very settled. Here are Rosella's fabulous story stone stories completed in L3 groups this week. Well done everyone!
Congratulations to all of our students who received home reading awards this week. So many award recipients today, including our first two students to reach 250 nights! A wonderful effort by all. 250 nights
We had four birthdays to celebrate in 'Kinder Time Together' today, including two Rosella friends. We celebrated with singing, a special certificate and book mark. Happy birthday!
Our caterpillars are growing rapidly. Our first hatched caterpillar is very close to the size where it will move to a safe and sturdy spot to make the transformation to chrysalis. We placed a twig in their bottle today, next to the milkweed plant, just in case! Exciting times ahead! Until this amazing metamorphosis occurs, here is some video of our 'eating machines' today.
Rosella's Three Caterpillars from Sue Dowling on Vimeo.
In Maths this year Rosella have completed a lot of work with patterns - completing patterns and also creating our own. We have used various objects, shapes, body movements, numbers, letters, drawings etc to explore patterns. Today we used colour beads to create a bracelet for ourselves. We could use three different colours and of course we had to make a repeating pattern. Please view our video of us working today. We were concentrating so hard and constantly checking our progress by saying our colours to make sure we kept the pattern going. Do you like creating patterns?
Rosella's Pattern Bracelets from Sue Dowling on Vimeo. Today at HPS we held 'Nude Food Day'. The goal today was to bring all food to school in washable containers to minimise the amount of rubbish we generated, and therefore reduce the amount of rubbish that would usually end up in landfill. Rosella did a great job and enjoyed our fruit break, lunch and recess from our reusable containers, rather than plastic zip lock bags and cling wrap. A big thanks to our parents who supported this initiative and enabled us to enjoy our 'nude' food today.
Our three caterpillars, or mini 'eating machines', are enjoying some fresh milkweed leaves today. Yum!
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About UsRosella is a class of 17 happy and enthusiastic children excited to be in Kindergarten at Helensburgh PS in 2017. Our teachers are Mrs Jan Fuller (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) and Mrs Sue Dowling (Thursday and Friday) Our school is in NSW, Australia. Please feed Jig an apple and spray him clean if he rolls in the mud!
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