Category Archives: Journey North

Welcome to Spring!

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birds-216827_640Hello TK friends,

I hope you are enjoying your vacation time. The rain may have stopped some plans for a few days this month, but gardens and trees have sprung to life because of it. Take time to look around and notice the changes that are happening daily. What are the animals doing? Do you see birds migrating back to the north? What kind of birds are flying away and what kind are staying here? Are they building nests and defending their territory? It is a very busy time of year in the animal kingdom. There is so much to observe. Leave us a comment about what you have noticed in your neighborhood.

Joyfully,
Mrs. P

Finding Our Butterflies

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symbolic migration
Last fall we created butterflies with our third grade buddies and sent them to journeynorth.org to participate in a symbolic migration to Mexico. The butterflies have finally arrived! Follow this link to look for the butterflies we sent. Find Our Butterflies Enter the name Carroll and you will see the two schools that received our butterflies. Can you find those schools on a map of Mexico? Click through the photos. Can you see our butterflies? Compare their schools with ours. How are they the same and how are they different?

Migrating Monarchs

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We have been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly and the amazing migration of monarch butterflies.  The monarch butterflies travel from all over North America to spend the winter in a very small area of Mexico.  Read about it on JourneyNorth.org.

Our buddy class (Mrs. Washington’s Third Graders) have helped us participate in the Symbolic Migration.  We are sending a cluster of decorated butterflies and friendly notes to school children in Mexico as a tokens of goodwill between our two countries.  We are ambassadors and building understanding between people of other nations.  We are also citizen scientists sharing observations of our environment as we post on journeynorth.org. You, too, can follow the migration of the butterflies or post your nature observations on the website via their app on your smartphone.

symbolic migration IMG_8184 IMG_8186

The Butterflies Have Returned!

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april camera 176 We couldn’t believe it! We received a package from journeynorth.org that was filled with butterflies that had migrated to Mexico and back to the US. The large butterfly came from Ms. Lange and Ms. Wertheim’s class in Asheville, North Carolina. The small butterflies came from many different states: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. Two butterflies came directly from Coahuila, Mexico! We also received a letter from one of the students who lives near the butterfly sanctuary in Mexico. We are looking for someone who can read the letter to us because it is written in Spanish. Can you help?

We are researching where each of these butterflies came from. We are also adding information to the journeynorth.org website so students can find out where their butterflies landed. Hopefully, the classes that got our butterflies will post online, too. Then we can discover where they ended up. This project has made looking at a map more fun than usual for us.

Butterfly Migration

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Cathe's phone 238I have exciting news!  Our butterflies made it to Mexico!  Click here to Find Our Butterflies! and see the students who are taking care of them for the winter.  Can you find Michoacan, Mexico on a map? Do you remember how far our butterflies had to travel?  I wonder when the real monarch butterflies will begin their migration north again?  When will the Mexican students send us their butterflies?  Make a prediction and post it as a comment.

Tulip Tragedy!

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Our tulips have been bringing color and loveliness to the schoolyard for several weeks.  Unfortunately, someone didn’t appreciate them and cut off four blooms and two buds and left them laying next to the stems.  I noticed this tragedy late on Thursday.  This follows another incident  on Monday when we had to replant a flower that had been pulled out, bulb and all.  That could have been a curious child who just pulled too hard when investigating the garden. It is much harder for us to understand why someone would purposely damage our garden. :(..

Tulip Progress

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We have been watching our tulip garden for signs of spring.  It’s exciting to count new sprouts, but it hasn’t been easy!  We are pretty sure that we have 20 sprouts pushing up out of their winter bed.  A few of them are over an inch tall and growing quickly.  The recent rain and warmer temperatures have signaled that it is safe to come out.  Hopefully, the rest of the bulbs will soon send up their sprouts to enjoy the spring weather.

What other signs of spring have you noticed?  Bring your observation to class by Friday and get a treat!

Mrs. P.