Learning by Heart – Sept. 23, 2011

 Butterfly Unit

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”

– Henry Ward Beecher

 

Butterfly Unit

We are in love with butterflies here. :)  We ordered our own set of Painted Lady caterpillars and watched them grow, form chrysalides, turn into butterflies and hatch out. We fed them and watched them for a few days, then released them. 

SCIENCE:

The caterpillars came in a jar with food, and we were told opening it could introduce bacteria into the jar and kill them.  Because of this, I wasn’t able to get any good photos of the caterpillars, but we really enjoyed watching them move around and grow (they grow fast!).  Once the first one started forming her chrysalis, we kept a sharp eye out and when they were all finished we opened the jar and transferred them into their little butterfly home (a net pavilion that came with our kit, found at Walmart): And then we waited, and waited, and waited some more.  I was worried about the one on the top right, because when I transferred it I had to pry it away from the side of the jar and was afraid I had torn a hole in her chrysalis.  Turns out I probably did, as she never hatched.  As you can see in the photo above, that one looked less healthy than the other three.  Also, if you look closely at the bottom left chrysalis, you can see the pattern of the wings through the thin shell.  This was the first one to hatch.

And here she is:

She was all alone for two whole days and we were beginning to wonder about the others.  However, they did just fine and both hatched out within an hour of each other.  Here is a photo of the final one pushing her way out:

Isn’t that cool?!  All three of us hovered over it and were fascinated as she struggled out.  It was like watching a tiny miracle happen. :)  We are sentimental folk and not afraid to get all gushy over a caterpillar turning into a butterfly right before our eyes. ;)

We placed beautiful red carnations in the bottom of their home and dropped sugar water all over them for the butterflies to eat:It was very cool seeing them unroll their long straw-like tongues (proboscis, if you want to say a big word instead of tongue) to sip it up.  Unfortunately, with the netting in the way it was hard to get a good tongue shot with my camera.

We watched and marveled over them for almost a week, then we released them.  This was not an easy thing to talk M into doing.  He didn’t want to let them go.  He loved them, as only a child can. :)  But when he realized that they would die soon anyway (Painted Ladies only live 2-3 weeks once they are butterflies), and it would be awful if they died without ever having flown out in the big wide world, he agreed to let them go.

So we took them to the backyard, near our St. Francis statue, and read this little (modified, by me) blessing.  (I tell you, we are sentimental!!  But really this did make it very special):

“Blessed are you, Lord God, maker of all living creatures. You called forth fish in the sea, birds and butterflies in the air and animals on the land. You inspired St. Francis to call all of them his brothers and sisters. We ask you to bless these butterflies. May we always praise you for all your beauty in creation. Blessed are you, Lord our God, in all your creatures!”

M had named each one, so we took them out one by one and let them fly away.  The final one was busy having lunch when I picked her out of the net, and M got to hold her for a very long time.  He whispered something to her, and gave her a sweet little kiss:   

Then he set her in the little bowl:

Finally, she flew away and posed on the ground for me before taking off again:Beautiful, no?

We left the carnations out for them to come back to, if they were so inclined:This was a wonderful experience!  I highly recommend it.  We ordered our caterpillars through Insect Lore.

We took it easy this week, and did only a few simple activities related to butterflies…

SCIENCE:

M made a life cycle wheel (click on the link; the printable can be found towards the center of the page) for butterflies:

We learned some new vocabulary as we talked about the parts of a butterfly, and worked with our 3-part nomenclature cards:

We talked about the compound eye of a butterfly, just briefly (really is there much to say?) and I showed M how to look through a crystal at an object and see many of the same thing… this is a little bit like what the butterfly sees all the time. 

In our nature center class this week we also just happened to be talking about insects, butterflies in particular, and M made this little butterfly out of air-drying clay:

We also learned that all insects have 6 legs, as well as three parts to their bodies: head, thorax, and abdomen.  There was a very cute song we learned, sung to the tune of “Head and shoulders, knees and toes” which went like this:

Head and thorax, abdomen (six legs!)

Head and thorax, abdomen (six legs!)

Eyes and tongue, and exoskeleton,

Head and thorax, abdomen (six legs!)

It takes a little work, but if you sing it correctly exoskeleton and abdomen rhyme (kind of).  And the “six legs!” part is said in a little afterthought sort of way. :)  M loved it. 

MATH:

We talked about what “symmetry” is and how butterflies are symmetrical – their wings are perfect mirror copies of each other.  

We worked on some symmetrical pattern block patterns we have:

I showed M how to hold the little mirror upright in the center of each pattern and see how the mirror reflected the other side.  We went through several patterns, doing this to see if they were symmetrical or not.  If the part behind the mirror looked exactly like the image reflected in the mirror, it was symmetrical.  We found that some patterns were symmetrical both “sideways” and “up and down” (horizontally and vertically), but many were symmetrical only one of the ways.  This was a hands on activity, so there are no action photos… but I’m sure you get the idea. :)  We also filled in the patterns with our blocks.
Note the bottom pattern in the photo above, does not have clear lines showing where pieces go, but it does have the colors of the blocks for guidance.  M loved doing this, and I think is ready for more of a challenge.  He also realized that if he didn’t have a certain shape, like a yellow hexagon, he could use other pieces to make that shape.  (It is sitting on a cookie tray because our pattern blocks are magnetic.)

In case anyone is interested, we have this basic set:

and this more advanced set:   And these magnetic pattern blocks:

For another activity about symmetry, I used this set of butterfly cards from Prekinders (look at the bottom of her printables section; also, she has a whole section on bugs that is really great!); this is supposed to be a matching game, but I cut all the cards in half and we used one half on the mirror to see what the entire butterfly would look like.  This was probably M’s favorite thing of the week; and such a simple activity to set up: 

LITERACY SKILLS:

We used our chenille (pipe cleaner) letters to practice letter formation, using all the letters that are in the word butterfly.  I would have preferred using lower case, “baby” letters for this, but can’t find them anywhere.  Now, I’m starting to question whether I ever made them in lower case!  It is too late to make them now since M seems to be getting past the need for them pretty quickly, so we just used the upper case ones.

To do this activity, M traces the letter on the card with his finger, then practices writing it in a tray of flour:

After doing all the letters, we played a little game with these cards.  M shut his eyes, and I took his finger and traced the letter on one of the cards; he tried to guess, from touch alone, which letter he was tracing (I gave him a choice between 2 of the letters to make it easier).  This was a fun game and he enjoyed it enough that we actually got through all of the letters!

Then onto a little play dough fun.  I printed out a page with “butterfly” written on it, all in lowercase letters.  M rolled some play dough into “snakes” and used them to form the letters.  I explained that we normally would write butterfly in lowercase letters, like this:
I am not proud of what happened next, but at this point we were getting a bit silly (that never happens in your house, right?), and in the interest of pursuing knowledge with a 5 year old boy, I told him what the first 4 letters of butterfly spell by themselves.  Then I told him what it spells with the “er” added.  And soon there were all kinds of jokes about butt butter and “Oh, would you like some butt butter on your toast, sir?” and that sort of thing.  I am not winning any mother of the year awards this year, but I am also not really trying.   And, yes, he did actually learn something too. ;)

Here is a list of the books we read during this little unit; not all are listed, only the ones we liked. ;)

     

  

Just for Fun:

I whipped up a quick roll-and-draw game to go with our butterfly theme.  It reinforces some of the vocab for parts of a butterfly, and works a little on those fine motor skills too.  You can print our Roll-a-Butterfly page, if you are interested!
All the players get a blank sheet of paper.  Each player rolls the die and draws the part of the butterfly that the number corresponds to on the guide sheet.  The first to draw a complete butterfly is the winner.  M actually liked this, and started singing the “Head, thorax, abdomen (six legs!)” song again. :) 

There were a few other things I planned to do with M this week – another math game, and an art project – but it was a really hard week on us.  I don’t know if we just need to get back into the swing of things or what, but neither M nor I were really into much that we did.  I was very discouraged by week’s end, and ready to give up!   However, writing and then reading over all that we did helps my perspective a bit.  What do you do when you have a very discouraging week and feel like anyone else in the world could do a better job of teaching your child than you are doing?  Feel free to give me a pep talk, I definitely need one, and am not too proud to beg. ;)

Linking this post up to  Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up, and 

Check them out for some great homeschooling posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)