Fredrick Meijer Gardens

  Wow!  What a great week back after Spring Break!  We are anticipating the arrival of our Monarch caterpillars very soon.  To prepare, we took a trip to the butterfly gardens at The Fredrick Meijer Gardens!  Thanks go out to Mrs. Csapos, Mrs. Austin, Mr. Volkers and Mr. Klein for accompanying us!  With so many patrons and groups from other schools visiting the same day, there was no way our trip would have run as smoothly without their help!  Thank you also to Hamilton's administration team for picking up additional costs not covered by the collected amount per child.
  We began our day by participating in the "Then and Now" program.  We had three stations to visit.  One was in the barn, where we learned about chores children and families did along with the tools used to do them in the olden days.  We saw several types of tools, such as sheep sheers, scythe, and a washboard used for laundry. The children had the opportunity to pretend to wash a piece of clothing using a washboard, then hanging it up to dry using a clothesline and clothespin.

Another station found us learning about ways children and their families had fun in the past.  Our guide talked to us about how families told stories, and later, listened to the radio, because television was not invented yet.  She also showed us ways children made their own fun.  She set up two jump ropes and kids took turns 'jumping over the river'.  The 'river' kept growing wider and wider until someone 'fell into' the river!  They then tried having a sack race.  Last, they had a parade using kitchen pots, pans with wooden spoons, wood blocks, washboards and more to make music.

At our last station, we learned about food in the past.  We learned that children gathered eggs daily, planted seeds and tended their gardens to grow food, and made their own butter using cream collected when they milked their cows (using a butter churn).  We then had the opportunity to make our own butter while listening to a story, by shaking heavy whipping cream in a jar. We spread the butter on a cracker and enjoyed eating it!

After lunch, we went into the actual butterfly garden!  First, we saw Monarch caterpillars right out in the open on milkweed plants!  We then went into the butterfly garden!  There were so many beautiful butterflies everywhere!  We could have spent so much more time in there!

After the butterfly garden, we had the opportunity to go to a Butterfly Basics program.  A former teacher taught us about Metamorphosis. She showed us a series of photos showing each stage of a Monarch's life cycle.  She then led us in a craft where we used a paper plate and pasta to show and label each stage. We used a piece of rice for the egg, spiral pasta for a caterpillar, shell pasta as a chrysalis and bow pasta as a butterfly!

  We had 30 minutes left before we left, so we went out to the Children's Sculpture Park, where we found a wonderful tree house/play structure!  The kids had so much fun running around like crazy!  There were also a few neat places to take a few group photos. 

Thanks to my parent helpers for contributing their photos for our blog!  We had a great day, but we didn't see everything there was to see!  If you and your family would like to see the butterflies, they will be there through April 30th!  The first graders and I highly recommend the trip!