Today was our final "goodbye" to our froggies as they head for an animal shelter on Saturday. It has been a fascinating process for all of us to watch them grow from eggs...to aquatic, herbivorous tadpoles...then to terrestrial, carnivorous little beings that are only about the size of Madame's thumbnail. But we learned a very important lesson from all of this - we aren't actually allowed to scoop up tadpoles from their homes. In fact, it's illegal! Oops! Madame didn't even know this! So the motto we practiced saying this week was: "Wild stays wild." We should leave wild things in their wild homes. Lesson learned! But on the topic of wild things, we are now getting ready to witness another animal transformation, and this one is not illegal...Madame has double-checked! ;-) About a week and a half ago, we welcomed tiny caterpillars into our class. (These caterpillars are bred for this so they are not taken from the wild.) They became big and fat over the last week or so, and have now spun themselves into chrysalis, beginning the process of soon becoming butterflies! We love checking on their progress each morning and were so fascinated to watch the caterpillars shake as they spun their silk buttons around themselves. Yesterday we began learning about maps by trying out some geocaching. First we studied the map and all of its elements, and then we worked in pairs to try to find the best route from our school to where the geocache was hidden. There were certain things we had to take into account - we had to draw our route by staying on the roads, and we had to avoid the most direct, but busiest road. It was interesting to look at all of the many route ideas that we came up with. In the end, we picked the shortest one - a route that Madame had never taken before either - and decided to try it! A true adventure! Armed with our maps, we set out in the torrential rain to find our "treasure". Madame stopped at every intersection to have us read the street signs and direct her, based on our maps: Should we go à gauche ("left"), à droite ("right"), or tout droit ("straight")? Parker's excellent map-reading skills brought us right to the area where our geocache was hidden, and Kayden's skillful eyes were the first to spot it. Madame was so impressed that there were hardly any complaints about the weather! We all just pretended that we were at an outdoor spray park. Thank you, parents, for sending us all in good rain gear! It makes all the difference! We used the pen hidden with the geocache to make our lasting mark on the spot. Just as exciting as the geocache were the ripening salmon berries that we found along the way! They turned out to be a very sought-out treasure in and of themselves. We did an excellent job of asking Madame's permission before eating the berries. Other fun photos from the week:
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