Ant problem?

I can't believe it is already May and I am still talking about April! My grade level team was just wrapping up our big Insect Science Unit and we were so happy that our ants arrived after Spring Break. We would have plenty of time to watch them build their tunnels and students could record their observations about how they work together. But, after the weekend we came back and our ants had died! We didn't tell the kids and quickly ordered a new batch. They wouldn't notice and we would be extra careful with these ones so we could teach the unit. Well those died too! There was no hiding this one! We couldn't order a new batch, so my TC and I thought we could use a virtual ant farm. We found one at www.zen-sign.com/extranet/antland. The kids loved feeding their own ants and watch them build tunnels using laptops. They even asked us if those were our ants?!

My class also worked on a collaborative project with Melissa Garcia's class. We were working on writing friendly letters and thought we could use Voice Threads and post them on our blog and Melissa's class could respond to them. We looked at Melissa's blog and the kids were really excited to correspond with them about what they wished for in third grade! I am still in the process of posting them to my blog at http://mrswaheedroom28.blogspot.com/.