Butterfly Release

This week our chrysalis all hatched offering up beautiful butterflies! All six of them made it without a hitch, were healthy and simply amazing! Once we found a sunny day Holly took them out to release them in the garden - what an enjoyable experience. We took it slowly and released one at a time, each offering Holly a small visit before taking flight.

Waiting....

We are still finishing up some lessons on butterflies and moths. Our caterpillars have created their chrysalis homes and are in the midst of changing to a beautiful butterfly. In the mean time we have been enjoying some fantastic books and collecting wild butterfly & moths to inspect and release. Another fun tool we have used in our journey was a great video from DK Eyewitness DVD called Butterfly & Moth ~ this was beautifully done and a wonderful compliment to our studies. I love Netflix!!!

Now, we wait for these little critters to become beauties!

Caterpillars & Butterflies

We are still going strong on learning all about butterflies... in fact, we now have these little guys:

Each day they are eating and growing larger and larger - it won't be too long before they are a chrysalis... exciting!!! Holly has really enjoyed watching, inspecting, learning and predicting.

We also have a large collection of books on butterflies we read all the time, do our coloring field guide, enjoy puzzles and craft projects - the days are full of butterflies! We have spent the nicer days out in search of butterflies in the garden with some luck, not too bad for this early in the year. And, we have enjoyed some online resources too. A favorite has been this site: http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/

I am trying to decide if we want to do a praying mantis hatch before we wrap up our very hands on insect unit that included ants, lady bugs, butterflies and so much more... a ton of outdoor inspection with a field guide, magnifying glass and nature journal. So many choices!

Butterfly Field Guide

A fun book we recently purchased at the Nisqually Delta book shop is the Peterson's Butterfly Field Guide. I knew we were going to be doing a small unit on butterflies so this was a great addition - as well, Holly enjoys these kinds of color books for general use.

This book covers so many different butterflies, some native to our region and others are not. However, it really opened Holly's eyes to just how many are out there. The book is neat in that you choose a butterfly image you would like to color, find the sticker that serves as a guide on what the butterfly looks like and then color that image. There is also a paragraph or so on each butterfly. The beginning of the book also does a nice introduction to butterflies, their habitats and life cycle. This is a great book!

Venn Diagram: Butterflies & Moths

We have moved onto butterflies in our insect studies, which is a lot of fun for Holly! We have studied butterflies numerous times so coming up with some new books and projects is proving to be a bit more challenging. One project I chose was to create a Venn diagram comparing butterflies and moths - she loved this!!!

I actually found the perfect book to complete this project with. It is called What's the Difference Between a Butterfly and a Moth? by Robin Koontz. This book has beautiful illustrations and is written on a nice, basic level. It offered Holly the perfect opportunity to read it, think on it and then pull out the similarities and differences between the two winged beauties.

Working With Chalk

This week we did a couple of lessons with chalk in art. She reviewed blending, lines, symmetry, warm colors and cool colors. Working with chalk for children can be tricky, it can be messy and it can be frustrating to use... the best way to learn how to use it - keep using it, a lot. When you are finished with a chalk drawing spray it with a can of aerosol hairspray very lightly and the chalk will no longer smear about.

These are her two favorite pictures in which her subject was butterflies. The large butterfly she tried really hard to create a butterfly with good symmetry, in which I think she did a fantastic job from the initial line drawing to the design within. Her second drawing was on black paper to see the contrast of colors in a butterfly garden with a bird bath and butterflies. They are both beautiful drawings we are proudly displaying on the wall right now.

Symmetry

This week we started a unit on butterflies and with that we also did a nice lesson on symmetry, a good review. This lesson works great with butterflies since they are fantastic examples of natural symmetry.

Holly enjoyed the classic art project of folding a piece of paper in half and painting one side, refold and smoosh the paint well then open to see a symmetrical design. She did this with plain paper and a butterfly cut out. She was bummed on her butterfly design the paper flapped over and the paint mixed in the wrong area... she quickly enjoyed her design and accepted the mistake on her project. All part of learning!

As well, we watched a small YouTube video on natural symmetry in our world and then she went in a scavenger hunt in the house for objects that display symmetry. She finished up with a worksheet on line symmetry and she cut our her own symmetrical design.


The YouTube video we used was this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX4cx-9zT1A&feature=player_embedded

Mini-Ant Lapbook

Holly put together a mini-lap book during her ant studies. We have made larger lap books, however this study really only required a small version. Still a very fun way to gather information we covered to review what she knows.

Her cover is a homemade ant she created. I didn't have the cover closed very well, so it looks a little funny in the photo - the legs do line up. The legs are all attached to the thorax, which is what she tried doing here. It looks cute when it is closed.

Then the inside of her lap book contains a little mini-book on predators of ants, ant body parts, facts about ants like that they have two stomachs, an ant has an exoskeleton, six legs, etc...

She also included a great diagram on an ant, externally and internally - she really enjoyed using this sheet to learn about ants.

The back cover she decided to include the ant life cycle and a little matchbook on various kind of ants. The matchbook ant book took six different kinds of ants and she had to write a fact about them, their diet and habitat. It was fun to really stop and review the knowledge we learned on ants and she loves to create little lap books - such a fun way to learn!

An Ant Nest

Today we red through a great little book from National Geographic on ants called All About Ants, it was interesting! In this book we focused on their homes, how they work and how they look. We also looked through some other books for examples. Holly then described to me an ants nest and set off to draw one out.

She was sure to include the various chambers for food, eggs, sleeping and the queen ant. Holly actually did two different drawings until she was happy with the final product. She then sat down and walked me through her nest, how it was laid out and where the various chambers were. It turned out fantastic!