Butterfly Metamorphosis Activities for Preschoolers

Our butterfly adventures ended this week.  We released our butterflies at the end of our last day.  It was the perfect way to end our week on Metamorphosis and our unit on Bees and Butterflies.
I shared the other week some egg-celent ideas (pun intended cuz I'm cheesy like that) from
Mother Goose Time as we studied the Egg in our Metamorphosis week.
 But here are our faves from the rest of the week of Metamorphosis.

Caterpillar 

Using our attribute blocks, my girl would roll a shape and we built the longest caterpillar we could naming each shape as we added to the body.  Her favorite activity though was building the caterpillar from the cornstarch noodles (amazing! check them out if you haven't).  MGT sent us a straw to make legs out of, but it would not stab into the noodles easily.  So I cut up some pipe cleaners and those worked great.  

We then took turns hiding the caterpillar and the other pretended to be a bird as we attempted to find the caterpillar.  It led to some great talks about predator and prey.

Chrysalis
On our Chrysalis day, we discussed the letter "X".  It was a great letter for that day, since we could make an X with our arms and hold ourselves pretending to be a chrysalis.
We made a pattern of the life cycle (I added the egg to our pattern cards below) of a butterfly, and my 4 year old drew it out.  I was so proud of her drawing!

Butterfly
It's so hard to teach her with my 16 month old who wants to be into ALLLLL of the things.   Lately I have been trying really hard to see what MGT has planned and how I can incorporate him into her lesson.  Our butterfly letter game was the perfect opportunity.  My son could throw the cube with our letter cards in it, and my daughter could use the butterflies and attach them to the flowers.  Doing this outside even made it more fun for both of them!  I try to take our learning outside as often as I can.
They both had a BLAST doing this activity.

Our butterfly day ended with us releasing our newest pets.
One amazing thing that happened was when we brought the carrier outside all the butterflies started to spread and open their wings.  They never looked like this indoors.  It is amazing how God designed them to know what to do.  Some flew off quickly, others had to be coaxed, and one even crawled onto my girl's finger to be released.  Definitely a cool experience for her and me.

What a great month of learning!  I loved how we could go outside and see all the bees and the butterflies around us.  In May, we will be studying Bubbles, Boats and Floats, and I will try to share a daily adventure on my FB page, so if you haven't followed me there, check it out :)


Happy Learning!

Metamorphosis for Preschoolers: Egg

A butterfly emerged overnight!

All day long, my girl has stared into the butterfly habitat whispering encouragements as the butterflies slowly move their wings.  It's adorable.

I would have never thought to buy a butterfly habitat and all that goes into it if we were not having an amazing unit from our Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum.

It was the perfect day to start our Metamorphosis Week with our Bees and Butterflies unit.

Although teaching with my 16 month rambunctious sidekick  proves quite challenging, today was a day when all things clicked and everyone had a part in the learning.

Community Challenge

The Community Challenge was to create a classroom leaf using the fingerprints of all the kids in the room on a leaf using our color for the month- WHITE.  It's only the 3 of us, so instead I gave Sister and Brother each a leaf (she cut hers) and using white paint she placed 15 white fingerprints on her leaf.  15 is one of our numbers of the month by the way.  

Brother used a white crayon to make marks on his leaf.

Literacy: Open Your Egg

 Yesterday was Easter, and boy did my boy have a blast finding our Resurrection eggs around the house.  I knew he could help Sister with this MGT literacy game.

We discussed how butterflies lay eggs on leaves, and MGT sent 6 plastic eggs.  I wrote the letters Kk, Xx, and Mm on scrap paper and placed each one in each egg.  I then placed the eggs on the floor for Brother to find and bring to his Sister.  She would then open the egg and write the letter on the giant leaf MGT sent us.  This worked out great!

Math: Hidden Eggs

MGT sent us white foam ovals and 3 sized leaves: small, medium, and large.

I had to cut some of the ovals into smaller ovals since they were all the same size, but this was such a great sorting game and Brother got to play too.  I hid all the "eggs" in the sensory bin of beans.  Brother absolutely loved rubbing his hands in this stuff.  As they searched and found the eggs, Sister then sorted them onto the appropriately labeled leaves.

She finished this activity by counting all the eggs.(19) 

STEAM: Rolling Eggs

MGT suggested an outdoor discovery lesson with balls and baskets.

I had a blue tub of a variety of balls that Sister and Brother practiced putting into different buckets.

We discussed the shape of eggs (ovals), whether eggs roll or bounce, and what would happen if we dropped an egg.  We were supposed to practice rolling, dropping, and bouncing the "eggs" (balls), but instead it turned into a game of throwing, tossing, and swirling balls in baskets.  Either way enjoyment was had and we got some much needed vitamin D from the sunshine.

Sister swings a bucket and Brother has to find one to swing too. :) 

Art: Eggs on a Leaf

After lunch and while Brother napped, I set up our Invitation to Create.

 I loved how her work turned out on this!

MGT sent us some tiny itty-bitty pasta that was the perfect little egg, a leaf shape, and photo.

Avaleigh used her markers to draw the veins on the leaf and then using the glue, she carefully made a blob of glue on her leaf.  Pinching the pasta, she placed it on the blob until it was completely covered.  She did this for 10 different blobs of glue; however, by the time she got to the 4th or 5th blob, she realized she could pour the pasta and that would cover her glue better.  

I loved how this project turned out! 

StoryTime:  A Monarch Butterfly's Life

by John Himmelman

MGT suggested that we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, which is a wonderful book.

However we know it backwards and forwards, and when I saw A Monarch Butterfly's Life in the library, I knew we had to read it. I love how this book shows the life cycle of the butterfly's life including how it migrates from the States to Mexico.  The pictures are fantastic and it has simple sentences with phenomenal word choice. Lots of information packed into this book.

Our day ended with us reading this book, watching an episode of Wild Kratts (Butterflies), and discovering 2 more butterflies had emerged from their chrysalises!

 You can kind of see the 3 of them in the pic below.

Whew!  That was a lot!  But it was so much fun and didn't even seem that long!  Super excited about this week and I can't wait to see what MGT has planned for us as we study the Caterpillar, Chrysalis, and Butterfly stages this week!

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Carpenter Bee Math

We are having a blast with our bee week with our Bees and Butterflies unit from Mother Goose Time.  Down here in the south, the bees returned about a month and a half ago.  Because our yard is filled with azaleas in the spring, we have no shortage of bees in our yard.  In fact, the carpenter bees love our back porch, and every spring I can find some new holes drilled by them. Here's their latest handiwork which coincided perfectly with our carpenter bee day.

Did you know carpenter bees drill holes with their mandibles (mouth parts)?

Me either!  Thank goodness for my MGT teacher guide for that tidbit of knowledge!  After telling Avaleigh this fact, we went outside to check out the post, home to our newest tennent.

Look at that mess he made...yeah I have no clue what that squiggly stuff is, but I have some guesses.

After Avaleigh and I inspected the hole, we went inside to play our Egg in the Hole math game.

The whole reason carpenter bees drill these holes is so they can form tunnels which provide a safe place for them to lay their eggs.

To play Egg in the Hole we used our pocket cube, number cards (I just inserted random numbers, but was sure to include our numbers of the month which are 15 and 16), playdough, and some bee pencil toppers that my girl won in her Easter egg hunt the other day.  Our teacher guide suggested using grains of rice as the eggs that would be placed in the hole; however, I didn't want to ruin our playdough, so we just did not use rice, but you totally could!

Before starting our game, we just had to play with the playdough!

Squishing it, flattening it out, and "drilling holes" in the playdough is always good fun!

Avaleigh then would roll the number cube and using her bee, she would drill that many holes into her playdough.  Then she rolled again and placed that many holes in her blue playdough.  Then she added the 2 together by counting all the holes her little bee placed into the playdough!

She found that if she used her bee's bottom to stamp the holes, it actually left a little "egg" in the hole!  Once she finished adding the two , she would ball up and flatten out her dough ready for the next roll.  She had a blast with this game. It was great practice at adding numbers and larger numbers at that!

Next week we will study butterflies with our MGT stuff, but we did get a head start by buying some caterpillars who have already made their chrysalis!  In fact, they all started shaking when I transported them to our butterfly habitat! Check that out below 

Be sure to check back in with us as we learn about butterflies!

Honey Bee Activities

We are into Bees and Butterflies around here 

thanks to our preschool curriculum from Mother Goose Time!

If you missed my last post on Beehive Stamping, be sure to check that out.

If you are looking for more bee fun, let me share what we did today!

First things first... grab some bee wings you bought at Dollar Tree last Halloween and put them on.

Math

Number Recognition

Using the cards MGT sent and some torn paper scraps to simulate pollen, my girl worked on her number recognition skills by moving the "pollen" aka torn paper from one flower to its matching big card flower.  She completed this in no time!  MGT suggested making it more challenging by using the number word names.  I might try that tomorrow.  On the back of all the little circles I will write the word name for the numbers 1-16.  Then I will read it to her and she will have to move the pollen to the correct flower.

Licking your finger makes the "pollen" stick to your finger thus allowing the torn paper, I mean pollen, to transfer from one flower to another.  She figured that out all by herself! Ha! 

Creativity: Invitation to Create

Nectar Painting

Using a pipette, cupcake liner, watery paint and markers, my girl created her own flowers.

We talked about how honey bees suck up nectar with their long tongues from flowers just like our pipette sucks up the watery paint!

STEAM

Sticky Paint

Loved this cool idea from MGT! Add honey or corn syrup to some paint in a small cup.  Use any painting tool to explore making marks and designs with the sticky paint.  Don't forget to taste the honey before adding to the paint!  That was my girl's favorite part!

This painting is super sticky and the honey gives the paint a really amazing shine!

LITERACY

Read Aloud: In the Trees, Honey Bees.

Our local library had a whole section on bees and butterflies...which I may or may not have checked out like 1/2 of those books....sorry library patrons!

That is how I stumbled upon this gem of a book!  

I love the simple rhyme throughout, but on each page, there is a little paragraph giving factual information about honey bees.  The pictures are stunning too!

Momma Needs A Minute?

No shame in the needing a minute game.  I have a one year old who likes to scream at me every time I set him down.  It's his favorite pastime.  I'm his favorite person.  When he's napping and I need to do school with my girl, but need a moment for myself, youTube and Cat in the Hat have been amazing! (it's also on Netflix). My girl loves this show.  I love how its short and sweet, lets me have a 10 minute break to myself, and corresponds with the learning we are already doing.  Just a trick to have up your sleeve when you need another cup of coffee, or time to prep dinner, or a minute in the potty without someone else talking to you or trying to smack the toilet paper to see how much rolls off.  We lost 1/2 a roll yesterday minutes after my son crushed a muffin on the bathmat.  I was putting said bathmat in the laundry when the roll was lost.  Ugh.... 

Cat in the Hat: Show Me the Honey

Of all our honey bee activities, my favorite had to be our book time.  Even though she's almost 5, my girl still likes to climb into my lap, place a blanket over us and have me read to her.  It'll be a sad day for sure when she decides she's too big for my lap.  

Excuse me for a minute... I seem to have something leaking out of my eyes....

Enjoy all the moments friends!

Even the crushed muffin/ toilet paper ones!

They'll be gone before we know it.