My students need live ants, caterpillars, life cycle model sets and butterfly habitats as we learn about spring and life cycles.
$598 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
I teach four-year-old kindergarten in a large urban public school district in Wisconsin. Currently, our entire school district receives free breakfast and lunch. My 25-30 students attend full-day K4. I have several special needs students who receive services and students who come to school speaking little or no English.
My school has wonderful parents who participate in their child's educational experiences and value education as an important part of their child's success in the future.
My classroom is for regular education and special education children. It is a wonderful, inclusive environment for children!
Because my K4 program is "board-funded" and K4 is not required by Wisconsin law, we receive no additional funds for anything. The governor has cut the education budget in our state by over 1.6 billion dollars since 2011.
My Project
Our students need ant farms, painted lady butterfly larvae, life cycle model sets, and butterfly habitats. Our students would benefit from seeing actual insects going through the life cycle. I have included our K3, K4 and K5 children for this project. The painted lady butterflies are a great way to view the life stages because they take a short 5-6 weeks to go through the entire process and children will have hands-on opportunities to view them in their small containers. I have been doing this project for several years now and it has been an excellent experience for the children.
Children learn through active engagement with hands-on materials.
Through this project, we will observe the larva through the adult stage using magnifying glasses and record our findings in a journal. We will also keep a journal of the activities of the ants. Children can manipulate the replicas of the life stages of the butterfly and ants and sequence them. The children will learn new vocabulary through the process with the use of charts, books, word webs, journal writing, research, and videos. Children will learn about nature, habitats and how to be caring and kind to living things. This has been an amazing activity in the past and each year the students learn so much from it.
The materials will make a difference for the children because they are real objects. It is difficult to teach life cycles through pictures. The materials will allow children to see, feel, hear and smell what goes on in the life of caterpillars and ants. Children will be able to view them daily and watch them grow and change. My former students still talk about the caterpillars and butterflies when I see them around our school!
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Schlueter and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
