Butterfly Life Cycle Week

This week's theme is going to be about butterflies and their life cycles.

Math:  I found a butterfly counting page on Flickr.  After searching I traced it back to My Organized Chaos.  I plan on letting Destructo count the different life stages of the butterfly and then I can write the number in for him.  We also went on a field trip to the zoo and counted how many different species of butterflies we saw while there.

Sensory:  I got the idea for our butterfly life cycle sensory bin from pre-K pages.  I put three boxes of noodles into our sensory bin.  I used rotini, shells, and farafalle.  I got the veggie noodles so they would be colorful without any work on my part.  Laziness I has it.  The rotini represented the caterpillars, the shells were the chrysalis, and the farafalle/bowtie shapes were the butterflies.  Both boys had a blast with the noodles.  And it was super easy to pick up.

Craft:  I made a butterfly life cycle craft.  It was super easy to do.  I got the idea from Bug and Buddy but modified it to go along with our sensory bin.  We painted the paper plates each kids favorite color and then Owl had eaten so much paint I gave up on attempting to do the activity with him and waited until his nap haha.  Kai then glued noodles that represented each stage in the butterfly's life cycle to the template I got from the blog above.  It was easy and turned out really well.

We also did a second butterfly life cycle poster that Destructo got to hang in his room.  I really felt creative with this one since I even used scrap book paper.  You know the scrap book paper I bought three years ago to use for Christmas presents.  That I never made.  Yeah.  Fail.

Reading:  We read a number of books this week.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
National Geographic Readers: Caterpillar to Butterfly
Charlie the Caterpillar The Lamb and the Butterfly
We also used both of the reference books I linked in this blog post (under language heading.)

 Science:  We used this Giant Magnetic Butterfly Life Cycle.  Destructo got to put it in order and stick it to his super fancy magnet board.  And by super fancy, I do totally mean serving platters that we have collected over the years and never used.  They are so super useful.

Fine Motor:  We also used the Magnetic Color Cubes that I mentioned last week.  I told Destructo to make a beautiful butterfly.  I am so in love with these magnet cubes.

Snack:  I made two butterfly themed snacks this week.  The first was the butterfly life cycle and both kiddos loved it.  The second was a decorate your butterfly yourself toast butterfly.  Both were super easy to make and the butterfly was fairly healthy.  (You can also use nutter butters for the butterfly's body but I wanted to up the health factor.)