Flutter Flutter Butterfly!

This week we will be doing a lot of butterfly themed activities, along with our other non-themed activities.  Especially exciting since we are starting to see some butterflies around! 

A favorite song/chant...

Lovely pics...can you sense some sarcasm there.  :-P  Sorry. 

These were actually the best ones out of the bunch I snapped quickly to give you an idea of how I did it.

I do not know where I got the clip art from so will pass on sharing this document.  It's relatively easy to make though!  I used stickers on the one side of the cards and the chant on the other side.  We chant the alphabet part and then flip the card over.

Alphabet Butterfly Rap

ABCDE

I found a butterfly on me!

FGHIJ

She started out in a very small way.

KLMNO

An egg smaller than my toe!

PQRST

Next a caterpillar she would be.

UVWXY

In a chrysalis is where she'd lie.

Z

That's how my butterfly came to be!

Author Unknown 

If you know who the author of this chant is please make a comment so I can give credit where it is due.  Thanks!

With the older child we spent a lot of time with this thought of butterflies being symmetrical.  She really caught on this year!  Often I do introduce the idea of symmetry with butterflies but I don't often see children exploring with that concept during their play and activities.  But I did today!

We started off by checking out some butterflies in books,

and on some window clings (great toddler fine motor!).

Then we moved to our butterflies made out of foam shapes (which we had sorted earlier in the morning...love the conversation between the two kiddos about the shapes as they were sorting!)

Foamie Butterflies

Simply tape a basic butterfly pattern to the wall (this one was Mailbox Preschool, April/May 2002), and then tape contact paper over top, sticky side out.  This is a lovely activity for both toddlers and preschoolers and I expect my school-age boys will be at it this afternoon.

After K. was ready to move on we moved to a dry erase board where I demonstrated filling the whole board with a simple butterfly shape.  This "filling the page" is a bit more of a struggle for toddlers/preschoolers, thus I demonstrate on a larger surface when I'd like to see the larger drawings.  She caught on and so we erased mine and she drew her's and we took turn adding shapes and lines on both sides of the butterfly (somewhat symmetrical!).  Then she moved on to a large piece of white construction paper and did the same thing.

Water Color Resist Butterfly

She really took the time to add a lot of color to her work today.  I'm pretty sure this is because of our daily journals that we've been doing since we came back from Spring Break.  (Typical of her would be all one color unless I encouraged otherwise.)  For her journals, she brainstorms, draws, colors (at least 5), labels (at least 3).  This visual can be found on the Journals: Draw and Label post, feel free to use it with your own kiddos. We'll do the same this week and then I think we'll move onto adding a sentence.  She LOVES the labeling!

Oil pastels are awesome to use with toddlers.  So much more rewarding than crayons!  Small enough that they don't break easy, small enough to encourage proper hand grip, easy to mark and bold colors! 

Seriated Heart Butterfly

A lovely paper craft to work on tracing a pattern, scissor skills and reinforce that thought of symmetry.  Today, we also worked with the concept of a hamburger and a hot dog fold.  I'll have to admit that I couldn't figure out what they were talking about in my son's kindergarten class.  They used those terms often...hamburger and hot dog folds.  (Granted, I was only hearing the words not seeing the demonstration.) LOL   One day I was folding a piece of paper and it clicked!  Been using those terms since then.  So a hamburger fold is bottom to top fold of a piece of portrait orientated paper and a hot dog fold is bottom to top of a piece of landscape orientated paper.   Picture a hamburger bun vs. a hot dog bun.

Hearts pattern to fit on a 9x12 piece of construction paper can be download here.  Print and cut out of cardstock or trace and cut from a file folder or cereal box cardboard to make tracers for the children.

Anyway, she chose 4 colors for her wings.  Folded each paper hamburger style, chose a heart to trace (supporting with left hand, tracing with right), and then cut out starting at the fold so that she ended up with two exact heart cut outs.  Then she glue them with points touching, largest to smallest.  Later added a body and attenae and got a relatively symmetrical butterfly.

Coffee Filter Butterflies

An oldie but a good one!

I normally always provide eye droppers with coffee filter work but today I chose to provide paint brushes.  Well, after the first coffee filter K. asked for the eye droppers.  :-)  The children used them both interchangeably.  We are actually going to do this again tomorrow but with washable markers and only water with paintbrush. Color mixing and fine motor.

A few pics from today.  It's going to be a busy week!  Hope it stays as beautiful as it was today!  We went outside and was out there almost an hour.  K. said to me as we came in..."But we only stayed out for 10 minutes."  :-D  Yes, that beautiful.  And part of it could have been that Donnie got the teeter totter and the roller coaster out over the weekend.  They played with those for quite awhile before getting to their normal routine activities.  They are so funny... they do the exact same things in the exact order almost everyday outside.  Always throws them for a loop when I slip something "new" in there.   Have a lovely week! 

K is for kite!

Symmetry Blot Kites

This project required several steps....we started this project first thing and it was completed, for the most part, before lunch.  We just did other activities in between each of the steps that required drying.

1st:  Mixing white and blue paint together to get the *perfect* shade.  Remember when mixing colors that you always start with the lightest color and add a little of the darker colors.

2nd: Painting the background sky color.

3rd: Adding clouds with a sponge, since it is mentioned in the song we sang (see below).

4th: Cutting the diamonds/kites from scrap paper.  Great use of scrap paper! Last week we did hearts this same way.  It's a skill that will benefit them as they get older.  I had a child once who after we had done this folded paper cutting for awhile he started stacking the papers together (other projects) with things I wanted him to cut out that were the same shape.  He told me that if he could cut with our folded paper he can cut his other paper quicker by putting them together.  Wow! Awesome for a 5 year old!

5th: Painting a design on one side of the kite, we used qtips, and folding over to print it to the other side.  FYI:  some children-especially younger ones- will paint both sides of the diamond.  That works just fine as well.

6th: Gluing onto the background and adding other details to create the final display.  We used yarn as a string of the kite.  Squeezing glue bottles are great fine motor as is tracking the yarn along the glue and pressing it in.  You may wish to have a wipe nearby for those children who have a "glue on my finger" issue. ;-P

Kites Song

Tune: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

See my kites up in the sky

Flying past you, oh so high

With the wind, they move so fast

Watch the clouds, moving past

See my kites up in the sky

Flying past you, oh so high!

---author unknown---

If you know to whom I can give credit for this song, please let me know and I will do so.

Hoping for a week that will go smoothly...after the past three weeks one kind of wonders "what will happen next?"  I'm glad to see the snow coming down so beautifully...but a snow day means another missed day and we've already miss so many because of Ms. Amber's situations.  Oh well, go with the flow!

Bugs: Butterflies II

So, finishing up our caterpillar/butterfly week.  Here are some of the things we did today.

Marbleized Butterflies

1.  Child cut out the butterfly.  Reinforcing the term symmetrical.

2.  Child spread shaving cream onto tray.  I chose to review basic shapes, letters, and numbers as I was put the shaving cream on the tray.

3.  Child used straws (and one ended up with eyedropper) in liquid watercolor to dribble onto the shaving cream.

4.  Child swirled the paint into the shaving cream with craft sticks.

5.  We gently pressed the butterfly paper onto the top of the shaving cream.

6.  I scraped off the remaining shaving cream and then wiped clean with paper towel.

BEAUTIFUL!  They repeated to make prints on paper.  We haven't decided quite what we'll do with them yet.  They dried very quickly :-) but they'll need to be put under something heavy (ie: books) to flatten out the curled up edges before we work with them.  Next time I might try cardstock.

Side notes: 

*  This was messy!  Well, we live and learn.  We found out that really, eyedroppers/straws don't work well when your fingers are covered in shaving cream so we ended up with the instruction that they were welcome to explore the shaving cream with their fingers AFTER they were done printing.  I'll definitely do it again though!  Though messy...it cleans up relatively easy.

*  Straws work for children with great fine motor skills.  For those that do not have great fine motor skills, use eye droppers.  I couldn't find all my eye droppers, for some reason, so decided on the straws thinking they could do it but the one child could not do it without much frustration so I gave him the one eye dropper I could find and said it didn't matter if he mixed the colors.  He definitely had an interesting gray brown when he was done.  :-)

Oh, by the way, I have a bowlful of shaving cream in my fridge.  :-P  One child suggested it and went on to predict (even saying "I predict...") what he thought would happen if we left it in the fridge for a certain amount of time.  So we did, and really, there wasn't much change :-) so it's still in there.  We'll check it after nap again.  Please encourage their curiosity!

Butterfly Sewing Card

This particular pattern was from www.kidssoup.com but they can easily be made without a pattern.  Remember that old greeting cards work well for "sewing".  Use cardstock or cardboard as construction paper can rip easily.  Today I encouraged them to go from hole to hole in order.  There have been times where I'll write the numerals on the back of the pattern just to reinforce number recognition, counting, and numerical order. 

Clothespin Word Spelling

I chose only three of the bugs from the set or they'd be there all day and become uninterested.  I chose a small, medium, and large word and we sorted by size and word chunks first.  I placed all the clothespins, in random order, with letters up in a single layer on the tray.  I heard sounds and names of the letters as they were working here.  Actually it looks like I snapped this picture at the right time.  If I remember correctly she had found the letter p and was saying /p/ /p/.  The 4 year old put the letters on randomly the 5 year old went from left to right finding each letter in a row.  Shows where they are in their development.  Clothespin activities are great for fine motor!  Slip them in when you can!

Butterfly Counting Cards

www.childcareland.com

I placed the cards in our dollar store butterfly napkin holder.  They randomly chose eight cards to work with.  This is a good way to introduce something and then if possible, leave it out so they can work on the rest of them if they desire.  I believe the little butterfly erasers that they used to mark the answer were another dollar store find.  I used this more for number recognition.  Best to do that type of activity randomly as otherwise they are just orally counting and guessing what the number is.  I also included higher numbers as a bit of a challenge for the older ones.  My 3 year old student was sick today.  :-(  But I would have only put numbers 1-5 plus three larger numbers as he's still working with those particular numbers.

Skip Counting "Extra" for the 5 year old

We've been skip counting by 10s with him to help him get the counting patterns.  Really, making charts 1-10 is really just redundant for him and not interesting so I thought I'd give him a little challenge.  :-)  I had set it up for up to 20 but took it back apart as it was still a bit too much for him to get.  Sometimes we do these charts as a hands-on...like yesterday's bow tie pasta number chart.  He asked me, "I get to take this home, right?"  :-)  So I'm going to take this as a positive...that he enjoyed this little bit of a challenge.  This activity was from a Mailbox publication.

What's this have to do with caterpillars/butterflies/bugs?  Nothing.  Other then one was using the magnetic balls and said, "Look!  I made a caterpillar...no, it's a snake."  :-)  But this child asked specifically for the magnets today.  One thing that is hard for me, with being home-based, in my main living area, with mixed age groups is that I can't leave a lot of the stuff out.  My personal belief is that children should have interest centers and many types of materials should be available for them to explore on their own.  But we really can't do that here.  Maybe someday I'll have a program where I WILL be able to do it that way.  :-) So in the meantime, I encourage them to tell me what they'd like to do and when they do I try my best to allow for it, if not on that day, then as soon as possible.