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!