on work.

First, here's last night's dinner:

A nice, big bowl of beans and rice was in order, after a seemingly long work week! Dan and I have been eating huge quantities of black beans lately -- I feel like I just cooked up a huge batch, but I took the last two jars out of the freezer last night! Must buy more. :)

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I really don't blog much about my "other life" (i.e., as a preschool teacher,) for a number of reasons -- this is a food blog (mostly,) I want to keep some confidentiality in my life, I can't (and won't) plaster pictures of other people's children on the internet, etc. BUT, I can tell you about something exciting we've been up to lately!

A few weeks ago, I noticed some rogue milkweed growing up through the woodchips on our playground. I kept a close eye on it, not really drawing much attention to it, until I noticed a TON of these:

Monarch eggs! I freaked out! (Literally, when I noticed them, I shouted, "Jackie! We've got eggs!") The kids all ran over and were totally and completely excited that we might have baby caterpillars, and eventually pupae and butterflies! We got busy:

Here's our awesome sign:

I quote from the kids, "Don't touch the eggs, please! Caterpillars are growing."

We've been protecting our milkweed like mother bears:

The sticks and yarn have since blown down in a thunderstorm, but the kids are busy devising some other plan for protecting their eggs.

Why all the hard work? 'Cause now . . .

Yessssss . . . we've found about a half-dozen caterpillars! I'm convinced there are more, since so many of the eggs have clearly hatched, but I think they have been hiding down in the woodchips, and coming up just to eat. We shall see . . . I'm hoping they will get bigger and bigger, and eventually become butterflies!

I spent some time browsing Google images when we first found the eggs, so we have a set of picture cards in our classroom, describing the whole life-cycle. The kids have learned the word "metamorphosis," and say it like they are silly TV announcers or something. We have been reading poems and stories about caterpillars and butterflies, the kids have been wearing shirts to school with butterflies on them on purpose, I took tons of pictures of different butterflies on my hiking and camping adventures these past couple of weeks, and I want to get ahold of a couple of body pillow cases, so the kids can pretend to be pupae. We're butterfly crazy! Woo!