Since all the caterpillars changed into chrysalides, I moved them into the larger butterfly habitat. They shook around lots and we knew they were getting ready to hatch.
Then one by one they started hatching in the night or early morning (before anyone was awake to check on them) as butterflies over the weekend. They are all currently hatched and I'm excited for the preschoolers to see them all flying around inside their habitat!
I bought the preschoolers butterfly nets so we could go out and look more closely at some of the bugs that live here. They thought that was a pretty fun adventure and we repeated it the next day as well.
On one of the particularly nice days, we went to the neighborhood playground to play for a while.
Another day was spent outside drawing the lifecycle stages of butterflies with chalk. Then they got into hopscotch, tic-tac-toe, and other fun things to play with chalk.
Leaf with eggs:
Caterpillar:
Chrysalis:
Butterfly:
I know the Book-It program is finished, but I couldn't help but buy this book for the preschoolers after all the interest they had in growing things!
We worked on a few math and literacy concepts; one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, sorting, phonemic awareness, letter recognition, and both simple and complex patterning. They are such smart kids!
After our bug hunting was finished, the preschoolers got a chance to draw what they had found (or what they had wished to find). We talked about insects vs. spiders and the number of legs and other things like that.
Another table time activity was completing the butterfly lifecycle. They love talking about this, especially since we have a real live example growing and changing before our very eyes!
Of course, there's still time to have fun and be silly in preschool.
