16
Jul

Butterfly Unit Study

Filed in Caterpillars and Butterflies, Insects and Bugs
We recently had a lot of fun doing a unit about butterflies. My kids don’t like the idea of doing school work during the summer, but we had so much fun that they didn’t even realize they were learning.
We started off by receiving some caterpillars in the mail. They are so tiny when they come! The day we received them the kids drew pictures in their nature journals of what they looked like and then wrote a sentence about what they observed.
Once they reached the chrysalis stage we moved them out of the little cup and into our butterfly net. We made new drawings in our nature journals and added a sentence about what was observed.
Lastly, we were able to observe the butterflies. We kept them for a few days and fed them sugar water.
The kids drew pictures of our painted lady butterflies in their nature journals.
Finally, we let our butterflies go.
We made these fun lapbooks from Around the Kampfire.
On one of the flaps they drew pictures of the life cycle of the butterfly and labeled what each step in the cycle is.
Inside the lapbook, there is a spot to label the parts of a butterfly, a place to write about how butterflies help plants grow, and a little flip book about butterflies. On one of the leaves we added some sesame seeds to represent the eggs. We did a fun activity to help the kids understand pollination. I forgot to take pictures, so I’ll try to describe it. I cut out flower shaped papers and put crunched up cheese puffs in the middle to represent pollen. Then the kids made a butterfly shape out of pipe cleaner. The butterflies flew to a flower and landed on the “pollen.” After walking on the “pollen,” they flew to a different flower shaped piece of paper and walked around on it. They were able to see how the pollen was left behind on the new flower.
Inside the leaves on the trees we wrote more about butterflies, like where they lay their eggs, what they eat, and how they protect themselves.

This was such a fun unit! My kids didn’t even know that they were doing science or practicing their reading and writing.

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