From Caterpillar to Butterfly
The second week of our Eric Carle unit had us focusing on the change that happened to the very hungry caterpillar as he spun his little "house" and emerged as a beautiful butterfly. And this fit so perfectly into the Easter season too!
The munchkins were excited to learn that they we would be creating another (actually our last) lapbook. This one was sort of a "mini", as we finished it in only a week, so it wasn't as packed full as some of our other lapbooks! It was beautiful and fun to create one-the-less.
We began with some copy work for the cover, choosing a wonderfully appropriate verse from the Bible: 2 Corinthians 5:17.
"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
Each munchkins also created a cool butterfly to adorn the other side of the folder. Of course, they used bilateral symmetry!
We continued to develop an understanding of the life cycle of the caterpillar/butterfly by creating several different life cycle visuals. One was a fun little life cycle wheel that was added to the lapbook (but not until after the munchkins took the time to play with it together).
The munchkins were thrilled to realize that our real caterpillars were completing all these life cycle changes on their own as we learned about them. You can image the excitement when it was discovered that we had our first chrysalis! We even learned the official name for that stage was "pupae". And we had four of them! It happened so fast, too.
What ended up being one of the most fascinating things about watching this whole process was the fact that the munchkins recognized that the larvae had molted and left behind a bunch of old skin right next to where they were hanging. Really cool! And such a great opportunity to understand and use all the new vocabulary we were learning.
We did a few other fun activities, using butterflies to help us practice our color words in a neat little "color by number" paper...
and to introduce the idea of fractions (1/2 and 1/4).
The munchkins created one last butterfly project to add to the inside of the lapbook. This one was a three dimensional butterfly that "opens" its wings when the lapbook is opened.
We finished out our lapbooks by adding a flap dedicated to how butterflies protect themselves and creating a diagram of that labeled the body parts of a butterfly.
Each munchkins also added a little creative writing prompt:
If I were a butterfly, I would...
"...be a red and purple and blue and green butterfly"
"...fly to the moon."
"...fly all day and live in a pink flower."
Too fun!
And of course...how do we end any week?
Food, of course!
Butterfly Jelly Sandwiches
Until next time...
Giggles,
Mrs. D.
Mrs. D.
No comments:
Post a Comment