Burke Museum

The Ladybug and Bumblebee classes had a phenomenal visit to the Burke Museum at the University of Washington this week.  The Burke Museum has an outstanding exhibit on dinosaurs that is hands on and interactive.  The kids loved every minute of it!

Spring!

It's definitely spring in the Ladybug room!  We're busy working on writing our hardcover books, painting flowers, releasing our butterflies (Emma, George, Alison, Max and Madalyn), and learning about coral reefs.  If you haven't had a chance to visit the classroom lately, stop and see us!

Minus Tide

Minus tide at Dumas Bay Sanctuary,

there were treasures every where we looked!

We found moon snails and lots of examples of things
we had been learning about.

There were literally 100's of live sand dollars

and dozens of sea anemones. 

We have the perfect spot to explore a minus tide near school.  We packed up our boots and the hit the beach for a minus 3 foot tide.  We explored the shoreline and found all sorts of things that we had been learning about.  The kids found snails, shells, moon snails and hundreds of sand dollars. A seal even kept an eye on us from just off the shore.

Sunny days!

All we are missing on this scavenger hunt is
sunglasses.

We went on the search for signs of spring
armed with a clipboard and a magnifying glass.

Mentor challenge:  design a road for a hexbug that
includes a bridge to go over or under.

This is how we learn French at Seabury, whole child learning
at its best.

Lunch at the fountain on a beautiful day.

New mentor challenge:  build a marble run that includes elevation,
a curve and ends in a container to catch the marbles.

It's been a full week for the Ladybugs! STEM challenges, theater visit, scavenger hunt and camels, rhinos and naked mole rats.  Don't you wish you were a Ladybug?

Busy times in the Ladybugs!

One of our older Seabury students (who used to be
a Ladybug) put together a powerpoint on animals in Zimbabwe.
He did an excellent job of telling the Ladybugs about his observations
of these fascinating animals.

It takes this many kids to be as long as a crocodile!

This week's challenge: using craft sticks,
binder clips and clothespins; build a structure to
support weight.

We had some amazing structures.

With the promise of sun in the forecast, we planted seeds
on Friday afternoon!

Crepuscular ??

Today's challenge in mentoring:

you have 40 cups and 20 minutes to build the highest tower.

Challenge part 2:  combine your cups to make
a bigger structure.

The winning design used a circular base and ended up over 6
feet high.  The clean up was huge.

Crepuscular?  Our new word for the day.  It came up in our discussion of lions in Africa.  It means animals that are active at dawn and dusk.  We learn something new everyday.

Solar System

The Ladybugs and Bumblebees have been learning about space for the past several weeks. We learned about the asteroid belt, the sun, 8 planets plus 5 dwarf planets and the aurora borealis.  The kids painted and cut and dictated important information about all of these things.  They wrote a group book about Pluto (mostly 'cause they felt bad that it is no longer a planet) and also wrote a book about space that has been sent in the publisher.  This week they finally got to take home the books they made and they are wonderful.  We finished this unit of study with a visit to the planetarium, presenting what we learned at the school gathering and making a bead necklace representing the solar system to scale (thanks to the big kids for helping with that one).  This unit was so much fun and so much learning!