Pre-K is a HOOT! : Caterpillars & Butterflies

It’s finally beginning to feel like Spring! Two of our favorite things to learn about in the spring are...caterpillars and butterflies!

CATERPILLAR CUPS

Early this week our butterfly kit from Insect Lore arrived and we immediately started observing our caterpillars! So far they have increased in size and have become much more active moving around in their cup! For the next few weeks we will observe the butterfly life cycle up close, watching them transform from caterpillars to chrysalides, to beautiful butterflies - then let them go to pollinate our world!

NATURE WALK & CATERPILLAR STICKS

This week we had beautiful weather so we decided to go on a nature walk! Along the way we collected sticks and brought them back to the classroom and turned them into caterpillars using pipe cleaners. Wrapping the pipe cleaners around the sticks turned out to be difficult for the kids, but with a little help they were able to create fuzzy little caterpillars, while working on fine motor development!

COUNTING CATERPILLAR EGGS

Using tweezers the kiddos practiced one-to-one correspondence by counting the number of "butterfly eggs" and matching them to the correct "leaf" number card.

LIFECYCLE OF A BUTTERFLY

This week we read many butterfly books that discussed the life cycle of butterfly. Butterflies go through four life stages, but they only look like butterflies in the final stage. The four stages are: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly.

LINE OF SYMMETRY BUTTERFLY CRAFT

What a fun and creative process art activity! To make our beautiful butterflies we first folded a piece of white card stock in half. We then opened up the piece of paper and drew a triangle on one half so one of the triangles points was pointing to the crease of the paper. The kiddos picked which color paint they wanted to use and squirted a few drops of paint inside the triangle. When the kiddos were satisfied with their choice in color and had enough paint on their paper, they folded the paper gain and gently rubbed the top of the paper, squishing and mixing the paint. Then, we opened the paper and were amazed at the results. The children's expressions were priceless (and you can see from the photos below!) After the paint dried, the kiddos cut out their butterfly and added the butterflies body and antennae. After everything dried, we talked about the line of symmetry and then compared and contrasted their butterflies.

"THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR"

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" falls into the category of predictable books, and the text is predictable in many ways: days of the week, counting words, and repeated sentence structure. We used these features during our role play, working on language development. Before we read the book, I spread out food and day cards in the rug. As we were reading, I encouraged the children to join in, and one-by-one asked the children to pick up the correct day and food cards as I read them and place them on the whiteboard. The kiddos had so much fun during this mini lesson!

RECESS