Butterfly Week

   

     When Alivia was two I began using A Beka Book Curriculum, and having "school time."  We just completed the three year old curriculum and we are taking a break from that this summer before starting the four year old preschool curriculum this fall.  Now that Weston is two, I'm excited about him being able to do school work with us also.  Don't get me wrong, he's been doing it with us all along, just in his own way.  The picture above of the butterflies is a poster from A Beka Book.
     We usually begin in August and finish up some time in April, so this year I thought it would be fun to plan a theme for each week of the summer to learn about something together and have lots of fun in the process.  Last summer we were moving out of state and the summer before that I had a one year old and a newborn.  This summer no life-altering transitions seem to be taking place, so I have a little more time to plan things like this.  We used supplies from around the house that we already had on hand, but I would recommend the Dollar Store for most art and craft supplies.  Last week was "butterfly week" at our house and here are the things we enjoyed. . . .

Coffee Filter Butterflies 

coffee filters, markers, glitter

glue, markers, and pipe cleaner

pipe cleaner antennas and hang on window

Butterfly Snack

Trix cereal in a plastic bag with pipe cleaner antennae
THEY THOUGHT THIS WAS GREAT!

Butterfly Coloring Pages

Butterfly life cycle coloring page

   I think this one was thrown away already (oops), but it was a neat way to teach eggs - caterpillar - Chrysalis - Butterfly

Bandaid Butterflies

decorate gauze

attach to construction paper with bandaids

decorate construction paper

Bowtie pasta butterflies

decorate pasta and glue to construction paper

draw flowers and trees around butterflies

Handprint butterflies

1.  Trace hands onto one color construction paper, cut out and attach to different color paper overlapping thumbs
2.  Glue on beads, color with markers, decorate with glitter
3.  Attach wiggly eyes and pipe cleaner antennae

They especially liked painting with some old glitter fingernail polish

Butterfly feeder

Butterflies like bright colors and over-ripe fruit, so for now we put an upside down frisbee with bananas out for them.  I hope to update soon with butterflies eating the bananas instead of just bugs, and we might make a prettier feeder.

     So, that was our week of butterfly fun.  I saw a commercial today for a Live Butterfly Garden that seemed to look like a great learning experience.  May be we will try it in the future.   Here's a family that tried it and enjoyed it at school time snippets.
     I tend to be an "all work - no play" type person by nature, but that does not make for a fun childhood experience.  Sure, meals have to be cooked, houses have to be cleaned, and there is always a never ending list of chores to be done, but I want to love my children by playing with them, so I try to be intentional about planning fun activities with my children.  Now that my kids are two and three they have a lot of fun doing projects together.  Since butterflies tend to be a little feminine, I'm thinking next week will be "sports week."