Below is a unit I made for teaching the girls about butterflies. I think this may be my key to doing preschool! I started right before the caterpillars came in the mail reading about caterpillar eggs and getting the girls really excited for the arrival of the caterpillars. once they arrived, we followed them through their life cycle and did appropriate activities for each stage, which I have listed below and divided by subject. Because Amita is currently in part time preschool, we did this unit over about 6 weeks - just taking our time and doing something when we got a chance. It turned out to be about 20 minutes a day of time and then we talked about it quite a lot throughout the day. All in all, it was a great success and now I have to decide the next unit I want to teach!
Science:
I bought a butterfly kit on amazon where they mail you baby caterpillars and provide everything you need to witness the entire life cycle of the butterfly. This is the only thing I purchased out of the entire unit.
Reading (all of these books I rented from the library):
Life Cycle:
Eggs, Legs, Wings: A Butterfly Life Cycle (First Graphics: Nature Cycles) by Sharon Knudsen
First The Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
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| This book is about all life cycles that start with eggs but it included butterflies so I thought it would still be good. |
I also rented a book called Butterfly Eggs, a non-fiction book just about eggs, but I can't seem to find a picture.
Caterpillars:
Caterpillars by Marilyn Sinter
Butterfly Eggs
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Butterflies:
Glasswings by Elisa Kleven
Butterfly by Mark Inkpen
Bird, Butterfly, Eel by James Prosek
Mixed Media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tvl6wz7e9M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tvl6wz7e9M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFN4cuBiWns&list=PLF2371CE81ACC4017
I also rented these movies from the library:
Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBkOOgEFi2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tvl6wz7e9M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YVqHnw0W-Q
Nutrition:
For a nutrition aspect, I had the kids some of the foods mentioned in the Very Hungry Caterpillar. They LOVED it and still talk about the different kinds of food. Amita's favorite was the pickle and Ashima enjoyed the Salami.
Math/Counting:
Art:
We made "stained glass" butterflies after reading Glasswings: A Butterfly's Story with contact paper, tissue paper, construction paper, and scissors.
We also made caterpillars out of circles and glued the circles together. With Ashima I worked on identifying colors when we did this.
This link has a lot of butterfly coloring pages: http://www.coloring.ws/butterfly1.htm
I found this kit at Wal-Mart for $5.00 and we made these one day:
Also:
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