It's hard to believe that the end of the year is here already. I hate to say good-bye to this group of kids. They have been one of the kindest, most hard working and cheerful classes I have ever had the privilege of teaching.  Have a wonderful summer, my Bumblebees! Your next year teachers will be so lucky to have you!

 Ladybugs and Bumblebees invited our mentors and teachers to read our books and comment on them. We were so proud to have them see our hard work and appreciate it!

 As a culminating math project the Bumblebees created math games for the Ladybugs. Each Bumblebee came up with a plan for a game and then created a mock up on paper. They generated and refined a list of supplies needed and decided on a system for keeping track of who had been to which game. Their work was amazing! There were stations for money, estimation, memory, number sense, patterning, missing numerals...10 unique and educational experiences. My favorite moment was when one student, who not so long ago struggled with writing numbers, was teaching a Ladybug the correct formation of the number 8! Yay! And with Gingerbread cookies for dessert it was a fantastic experience in teaching and learning.

 In our art class with Ms. Head this week Bumblebees studied the work of Alexander Calder, the inventor of the mobile and stabile. Students were given beads and wire fishing line and blocks of foam and were encouraged to build mobiles or stabiles of their own. We were quite familiar with mobiles but stabiles were a new idea. Stabiles are like mobiles except instead of hanging they balance from a solid base. We found the engineering piece of finding points of balance to be quite challenging as we tried to make them work within our artistic vision of how we wanted the beads arranged on the wires.

 Our nature walk for spring with our mentors and the Ladybugs. So many great discoveries. We even had to add some categories including free range chickens!

 We were very proud to make our own costumes for the spring performance. Here are the Ladybugs and Bumblebees posing both in their singing groups and all together after they had painted their shirts and let them dry. We also made our own shakers for use in the performance. We were very proud of our work, both in preparation and on stage!

 As a culminating project to our study of Australia, the Ladybugs and Bumblebees created books about Australian animals. Here we are presenting our favorite animals to the school at a Friday gathering. The older kids were impressed with our knowledge as well as how well we spoke to the group.

 Although we had to cancel last Friday, here are some moments in the sun from our first low tide beach explore. We found lots of sand dollars, both alive and dead. We found crabs of all sizes, moon snail shell casings drift wood, rocks, sand and water. It was a wonderful day at the beach!