Beautiful Butterflies

A few of our beautiful butterflies from today!  It was a lovely day...how can it not be with doing activity after activity with butterflies as the focus?!  We even got to chase them all around the yard today!

Foot Print Butterflies

An oldie but a good one! They made awesome prints this year!  I often do this 1:1 during free play, first thing in the morning.  It's a great way to start our morning...giggle, giggle, giggle!

Butterfly Dictation

A very simple activity that encourages children to really think about a topic.  Writing the words for the child allows for me to reinforce left to right progression, beginning sounds (or for older children-middle or ending sounds/blends), and spaghetti spaces vs. meatball spaces.  We also take the time to talk about tall, small, and monkey tail letters and notice how many letters in each word.  They chose tissue paper to accordion fold into their butterfly and pipe cleaner for the body.  Obviously T. was into yellow today.   They also used butterfly stamps to embellish their poem.   :-)

Butterfly Symmetry/Visual Discrimination

Kids Soup

Love that these are similar so they really need to pay attention to detail.  This activity fit into my time constraint but I would like to create one using real life pictures such as what we can find at Mama Jenn's site.

Butterfly Counting

We actually did this as a group.  T. chose a number card, H. put that many butterflies on the mat (with us all counting), and K. found the word card.   Our morning was pretty full this morning so this was a way to make this particular activity go a bit quicker and touch on a skill that each child is working on.  T: number recognition; H: counting w/ meaning; K: recognizing number words.

I was a bit concerned that there would be too much wait time for T.  I shouldn't have been concerned...entertained himself quite well!  LOL

This activity was printed from Kids Soup.  A lovely resource for preschool teachers!  The one website I actually pay a membership fee.  We glued pom poms, as was suggested, to the butterflies.  Made it much easier to move the butterflies around.

Butterfly Bubble Wrap Prints

We LOVE bubble wrap, especially for sensory activities.  It use to be that I would get plenty of bubble wrap in my packages from various places and was able to recycle/reuse.  However, they've changed to air bags.  :-(  So now I have to purchase a roll at the store.  But, it's worth it!  Before we started this activity we folded a piece of construction paper in half and they drew and cut out a basic butterfly shape to use as a print paper. 

We may add details after they dry, if the children wish.

On the left, if you look really closely, you can see bubbles.  I always squirt a good amount of dish soap with the paint (even if it's labeled washable paint/fingerpaint).  This is twofold: One, it helps the paint wash out a bit better but the main reason is because we can add just a wee bit of water and get some sudsy bubbles!  On the right, well, obviously this activity wasn't working for Mr. T.  He wanted to paint but he had just got done with blot painting and he threw a conniption every time he got paint on his hands from off the qtips.  So I knew he would not handle the finger paint so I exchanged it for lotion vs. paint.  Well, he didn't care for that either...but the other kids enjoyed the lotion.  :-P 

And, of course!  We must have some clean bubble wrap to explore with after the fact.  :-)  They were jumping on their pieces also and having so much fun that, even with the headache that decided to visit on today of all days, I had to smile along with them.  
 

Butterfly Sandwich Rebus

Here's this week's rebus recipe.  :-)  Rebus recipes are definitely a favorite. 

My boys and I tried doing Celery Butterflies with pretzel wings but, well, it was very frustrating to say the least and I decided that if we were getting frustrated it wasn't worth doing it with the preschoolers.  So, next best...a practical skill of making and cutting a sandwich.  We made it and ate it lunch.  Cutting the sandwich was the most difficult part, as you can imagine, but it's the skill that they'd benefit most from practicing.  :-)

Butterfly Marble Transfer

Love, love, love marble transfers for toddlers and preschoolers.  And my school-agers...they still like it also.  Remember that marbles are choking hazards...so supervise.  :-)  1/4 teaspoon is about a perfect size for our marbles.  I simply cut the butterfly out of a bath mat.

Butterfly Blot Collage
Inspired by Ellie and Abbie
(Their process was a LOT different so check it out!)

Patterns were from www.childcareland.com.

Children were provided small precut butterflies to paint a design on and press.  Yes, we did something like this not too long ago, but decided we'd do it again since they always love this cause and effect activity.  Can't really see it in the picture but we only glued the center of the butterfly so the wings are up off the paper.

And a favorite picture for today...

She was even telling him, "Look, see this (period).  This is how you know it's the end of the sentence."  T. does very well for his age in many areas of development and it really is because he's been around these older kiddos.  Heaven help his kindergarten teacher!  Oh, wait, that just might be me!  :-P