The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Our Very Own Butterflies

We had a wonderful unit on caterpillars and butterflies. I had found more than a dozen monarch caterpillars in a field of milk weed at the beginning of the month and placed them in a butterfly net in the classroom. Everyday we enjoyed checking the net to see if anything had changed and the children patiently awaited the reveal of our first butterfly. Here are some pictures of the process:

This is a picture of one of the preschoolers drawing her observations of the caterpillars for the day. As you can see....we had several green chrysalis in the net.

We read the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar several times. Then we completed many activities based on the book including putting butterflies in order by their shape and size, sorting butterflies by color, matching butterflies, and making artwork.

 In this activity we used bingo dabbers to recreate the artwork that Eric Carle used in his book.

I surveyed the class to see if they liked some of the foods that we read about in the book. They were able to practice name recognition and place their name on the chart for this activity. As it turned out...everyone likes lollipops and no one likes to eat green leaves like the caterpillar! :)

Our sensory table was filled with birdseed and other things that start with the letter "B" this week including butterflies. The children enjoyed manipulating the items in the table and making new discoveries.

This last picture is an example of our name caterpillars. The children practiced putting their letters in order to create their name and then they decorated their caterpillars.

We had a great week and the excitement and pure joy when each butterfly hatched was priceless. I loved hearing the children's shrieks and laughter as we let each butterfly fly free. It is one of my favorite activities to do with them. 

I wanted to share a few photos of the children letting our butterflies go outside. I had to crop and edit the pictures for privacy purposes but I hope it gives you a glance of the enchantment. The butterflies were willing to rest on our fingers and on some occasion they flew away immediately but on one of the colder, rainy days we had to place them on our fence to allow them time to adjust to the climate and within a few hours they had both flown away.