Bugs: Butterflies III

Thought that a few of you might enjoy some of the other butterfly songs I've used in the past.  These are not my own original songs.  I've collected them over the years and most I do not know the authors of.  So, if you do know who the author is, please let me know so I can give credit where it belongs.  Thanks.

Butterfly Song:

A B CDE
I found a butterfly on me!
F G HIJ
She started out in a very small way.
K L MNO
An egg smaller than my toe!
P Q RST
Next a caterpillar she would be.
U V WXY
In a chrysalis is where she'd lie.
Z Z ZZZ
That's how my butterfly came to be!
~ Jennifer Runkle
* I created index cards with a picture to represent each verse. For example) The first card would be A B C D E on it. The second card had a picture of a girl with a butterfly on her nose. Google images and you'll find many you can use for your own personal use. The children really enjoyed this "raplike" song. They got into it, definitely.

Caterpillars and Butterflies

Let's go to sleep            (Wiggle fingers.)

The little caterpillars said.

So they curled up         (Cross fingers and

In a chrysalis bed.         close hands as if praying.)

They will awaken         (Open fingers slowly.)

By and by,

And each one will be  (Clasp thumbs and

A lovely butterfly!           wiggle fingers like wings.)

* Fingerplays are great fine motor activities.

Oh Butterfly!  © Christa Koch of Preschool Education .Com

Sung to: "Oh Christmas Tree"

Oh, butterfly, Oh, butterfly

How I love your colors.

Oh, butterfly, Oh, butterfly

How I love your colors.

You fly so high and beautiful,

Your so soft and gentle.

Oh, butterfly, Oh, butterfly,

How I love your colors.

*  I used this as a review for colors using one color butterflies for young children.  For older children I used this song to introduce various patterened butterflies.  I've used fictional clipart or real photography.  Great vocab boosters!

Color Butterflies
The first to come to the garden bed
Is a lovely butterfly of brilliant red.

Then in comes another and that makes two,
Fly right in, my friend of blue.

"The garden is fine, the best I've seen,"
Says the butterfly of springtime green.

Our garden needs a sunshiny fellow,
Fly in, butterfly with wings of yellow.

Little friend of purple, fly in too,
This garden is waiting for a color like you.

Orange, orange, you've waited so long,
Fly right in where you belong.

Butterflies, butterflies, you're such a sight,
Flying together-a springtime delight!
Susan M. Paprocki
*  This works well with a felt board and felt butterflies in solid colors.  If you don't have a felt board, add magnet to the backs of laminated butterflies and use on a magnetic surface.  And if you don't have magnets there is nothing wrong with just laying them on the floor in front of your child.  :-)

 

The Life Of A Butterfly 

Sung to: "Skip to My Lou"

I'm a caterpillar, wiggle with me,

I'm a caterpillar, wiggle with me,

I'm a caterpillar, wiggle with me,

What'll I be, my darlin'?

A chrysalis, now sleep like me.....

What'll I be, my darlin'?

A butterfly, come fly with me...

Come fly with me my darlin'.

Now all together, lets do all three.

A caterpillar, a chrysalis, a butterfly -- three.

Move your body like this with me.

The life of a butterfly, darlin'.

*  Sometimes we have the wiggles...so here is a theme related song to help with following verbal instructions AND the wiggles!

BUTTERFLY POEM
Caterpillar, warm and furry
You are always in a hurry
Munching, munching, munching leaves
Eating anytime you please.

Caterpillar, warm and furry
You are growing in a hurry
Curl up tight, snug and warm
You'll be safe from summer storm

Butterfly, butterfly,
Where do you roam?
Who's lucky garden do you call your own?

Butterfly, butterfly
Why won't you stay?
Why are you always,
Fluttering away?

*  A poem like this  make for great conversation starters.  I also used it to lead into comparing the differences between caterpillars and butterflies.

I've wished for wings, but I don't know

Just how a kid gets wings to grow.

If you could show me how to do it,

I bet there would be nothing to it!

*  This little poem makes for a good imagination booster.  What child does not really "wish" for something they really can't have.  You may wish to have a blank paper or one with a simple butterfly border and encourage your child to draw what they would do or where would they go if they had wings.  Or maybe, what animal/insect would they be if they had wings.  Be sure to take dictation!

I'm a Butterfly

(tune: Pop Goes the Weasel)

 I spin and spin my chrysalis (circle fingers on palm)

Then go to rest inside (close fingers and rest hand on palm)

When I come out, I've changed indeed (open fingers slowly)

Look! I'm a butterfly! (fingers fly away)

*  I call these piggyback songs.  They use a familiar tune.  A song like this is catchy and easily remembered and are great for younger children or ones that are not a family member.  That way when they go home, they have a little song and it reminds the parents to ask how they day was.  :-)

Pretty Butterfly

Pretty, pretty butterfly

Flying up in the sky.

Pretty, pretty butterfly

Fly, fly, fly, fly.

Light upon my shoulder

Then upon my nose.

Light upon my tummy

Then upon my toes.

Pretty, pretty butterfly

Light upon my head.

Pretty, pretty butterfly

Time to go to bed.

*  This works well when you've made coffee filter or tissue paper in baggie butterflies.  You can also make a craft stick puppet butterfly for a scissors activity.  Then encourage your child to move their butterfly to the corresonding body parts. 

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So, thought of the day...how do your organize your ideas so you can easily find them?

A few years ago I pretty much got rid of my paper system.  I wasn't even using it anymore.  I was going to the internet and so on.  So I went and scanned in the ideas I wanted to keep and through out the rest.  I had created a formatted page in Word to fit the way I think when I lesson plan.  Now, if I come across a neat idea I can save it right into the theme file and activity organizer for future use.  I save pictures and such directly into that file.  It makes it nice and organized and when I'm not quite sure what it is I want to do I can browse through a file or two and that's usually enough to jumpstart my brain.  If you are interested in the "activity organizer" I use personally for Word, feel free to contact me and I'll send you the attachment.

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Two butterfly related books the children enjoyed this week.

   

Waiting for Wings and The Butterfly Alphabet

Check www.amazon.com

Both are very informational, which I love!  Waiting for Wings, at the end has a each of the featured butterflies and what they look like in each part of the cycle.  The Butterfly Alphabet gives the name of each butterfly it features and also information about each one.

Bugs: Butterflies

Small group today...wasn't quite sure how to handle myself.  :-)  Only 2 preschool students and 1 child younger then preschool age.  It sure was fun though!  It was drizzly out and they wanted to start kitchen time early so we did and spent a LONG time with our work. Was so interesting to observe them and listen to their conversations!  If you don't take the time to do that regularily, please do.  I know it's not always the most natural thing to do but listening to them will tell you a lot about their development, interests and even the things that might be bothering them.  

So, I wore cream top and cream colored skirt today because we weren't "really" painting.  LOL  I should have known better.  I was splattered and smeared with paint by the time the morning was over.  They really got into this project...one I've done variations of many times a year.  They never tire of it!  Here's some of them.  My only limit was, "when the paint gone, it's gone."  They didn't use it all up but most of it.  So then I filled them back up for the next kiddo. 

Butterfly Blots

Aren't they cool?!

We used "nancy bottles" which you can get from http://www.discountschoolsupply.com/.  These are a nice size for little hands.  Squeezing the paint out of them is a great hand strengthener also.  We used primary colors plus white. The difference between the 3 and 4 year old's exploration was that the 3 year old put paint everywhere on the paper in random spots and designs.  The 4 year old planned what she was doing.  The 3 year old also enjoyed the pressing down of the paper...."It's squishy!".  The 4 year old wasn't too sure about it and wanted me to do it.  Though I always encourage them to do it because it's "their work" so she did until it squished out the sides of the paper.  :-) 

Here's a little song we've been singing.  I had a couple copies of the booklet in my tub but they aren't all that clear and I wonder if they've been copied over and over.  I was thinking I got it off of Dr. Jean's website but I didn't see it on there.  So if anyone knows where I can find a little booklet that goes with this song, I'd love to have the original.   


The Butterfly
Tune:  Up on the Housetop
First comes the butterfly who lays an egg.
Out comes a caterpillar with many legs.
Oh, see the caterpillar spin and spin.
A little chrysalis to sleep in.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Look and see!
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Look and see!
Out of the chrysalis, my, oh my!
Out comes a beautiful butterfly!

Clothespin Butterflies

Awhle ago I put out a request for scrap material and a couple people in the area supplied me with lovely material.  We use it for various projects.  This is a great fine motor/sensory activity we've done with the materials.  I had cut rectangles and squares out of the material to provide a large variety of color, design and texture.  Then they squish the material together in the center and added clothespins.  K. wanted to put them up on the wall (she must have remembered from a couple years ago!)  So she designed our butterfly wall art!  We've two of them now.

Butterfly and Caterpillar Sound Mats

These can be found at http://www.kidssoup.com/.  This is one site I actually pay a membership to.  It is very worth my while.  (Thanks, Lorrie, for introducing me to this site.)  Typically I would use this type of activity as "file folder" activities.  Laminate it and use them here during our program but I like to send these type of things home on occasion because if a parent doesn't see the types of things we do then they don't know we are doing them.  It also makes it easier for them to reinforce the concepts we are teaching.  Can be costly if you are printing them off for each child.  Perhaps they have a black and white version...they typically do!

Split Pin Butterfly

http://www.sparklebox.com.uk

We did the caterpillar earlier in the week.  

The butterfly takes a little more effort and time...especially for the 4 year old who is very conscious of how her cutting looks.  It's exciting though to see my students become so capable with their cutting skills!  This little guy didn't really know how to hold a pair of scissors correctly, and was at the snip/fringe cutting stage.  Now?  He cut the wings out all by himself with minimal help (getting started is the hardest) and reminders of how to hold the scissors.  Daily scissors activities pay off, definitely!

Butterfly Number Chart

I love to use black paper as a background.  Makes the colors so bold looking.  The butterflies are just dyed bow tie pasta.  I use rubbing alcohol and food coloring in a resealable bag.  The longer you leave the pasta inside the bag the bolder the colors...just don't leave it so long that it gets gooey and sticks together.

Here's another simple visual discrimination activity. 

http://www.preschoolprintables.com/filefolder/butterfly/filefolderbutterfly.shtml

Another one that's been around here for quite awhile.  I put Trent up to the table this morning and he just looked at it like, what on earth?!  So I picked one up and matched and then walked away to see what he'd do.  He picked up another and moved it from one to another saying "uttfly" but the butterfly never landed.  :-P  A little young yet but sometimes he does things that surprise me and so I was just curious of what he would do.  If it was just 3 butterflies he could probably have handled it but I think it was way to stimulating and, in turn, overwhelming for him.  Back to preschool students:  It's definitely beneficial to enourage them to describe the butterflies.  If they are unable to describe the butterflies then ask them questions like "where are the butterflies with stripes?"  This helps them notice and label patterns.  Boost that vocabulary! 

Bugs: Caterpillars

So this week we'll be focusing on caterpillars and butterflies.  Have some activities we didn't get to last week so will slip them in when we can. 


We started out working with our C number caterpillar, to reinforce the letter C (magic c line that is used in letter formation) as well as reinforce number recognition and order.  Then I made it clear that this was an activity they can use on their own.  (Laminated and used velcro dots.)

I made this when Aaron was about 2.5 years (he's 8 now) it's held up well. 

http://www.first-school.ws/theme/printables/caterpillar-numbers-colors.htm

We also used the butterfly cycle from http://www.kidssoup.com/.  Actually, what was really neat was one child remembered another cycle (water cycle) and so we were singing our water cycle song too!  :-)  We also reinforce the shape oval today since the cycle was in an oval shape and so was our caterpillar pieces.

So the caterpillars are what we did during scissors today. They only cut the 4 oval body parts out as the antenna and legs would be a bit frustrating for all of them.  The printable is at http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/2481-2485/sb2485.html.

They call them split-pin minibeast characters and there is more then just the caterpillar.

Last week we did the 5 senses study about honey.  You can do this with most anything and it's a great way to review the five senses, take dictation, reinforce chart making and etc.

Pattern caterpillars

Though the patterns on the Kindergarten report card are ABAB, ABB, ABC and etc...anything that came home from school pretty much was encouraging an ABAB pattern. And that is what the old report cards were focusing on, ABAB.  Caleb did bring 1 or 2 items home that I could tell he had freedom to make his own because it wasn't ABAB.  :-)  He was past ABAB patterns at 3 years old...and that is what I find.  3 year olds, with experience, can grasp what an ABAB pattern is.  First you start out with physical patterning (clap, slap, clap, slap) then you move on to copying a pattern, then extending, then creating their own.  So my 3 year old today did that ABAB pattern (middle).  The 4 year old did an AABB pattern on her own (bottom) and the 5 year old did an ABCC pattern after I told her she could NOT do an ABAB pattern.  :-P  I love to hear my preschoolers tell me what kind of pattern it is!  Yes, they use ABAB or ABB terms.  :-P

I purchased a bunch of these chip and dip containers on clearance after halloween one year.  They are perfect for sorting activities but also for helping to instill an appreciation for organization.  I slipped in a little literacy by writing the color words, in corresponding colors, on tabs and sticking them on the plate where each of the colors were.   Knowing color words is not something they typically learn in preschool but they do fall under 'sight words' in Kindergarten so introduce it now!  It also helps reinforce that every word is made up with individual letters.  I often slip in chunking (syllable clapping) and beginning sounds with color words.

Art

Well, I changed my plans for today because my computer/work room was a disaster and could I find my lids for squish caterpillars, no way.  So, since we hadn't done free painting with brushes lately, I decided this was a good day to do that and wow!  Check out those butterflies and caterpillars! This is what happens when we do a theme...I really don't have to suggest anything.  The top is from the 5 year old, left bottom is a 4 year old and right bottom is the 3 year old who was exploring with color mixing (right on for his age).  I did have a fork available and I mentioned that forks make neat grass prints if they were interested...but left it at that since this was THEIR work.  Children should have many opportunities for "free painting".  :-)

We also pulled out the pattern blocks today to use with caterpillar and butterfly mats.  I have a set of pattern cards that I have purchased but PreKinders have free pattern block printables.  I print double sided, b/w on one side and colored on the other.  The colored side is much easier for the littler ones.  Remember to introduce/reinforce those nontraditional shapes, trapazoid, hexagon and diamond. 

http://prekinders.com/pattern-blocks/