Every summer at my preschool, our amazing Curriculum Coordinator supplies each classroom with a bunch of teeny, tiny monarch butterfly eggs...she is quite the professional at seeking these little gems out from the undersides of milkweed leaves! Have you ever watched the process from start to finish? It is quite miraculous...mind blowing really.
Anyway, this summer is no exception and it has been fun to watch the toddlers examine the containers and ask questions about what is happening. In true form of a 2 year old, the most fascinating topic usually revolves around how many BM's the caterpillar has made that day and why? Why? WHY?
My dear co-teacher C had a great idea to expand the topic over a week's time. She made a giant paper butterfly life cycle and broke it up into 5 days. We cleared our big chalkboard and told the toddlers that something amazing was coming to our classroom Monday morning! When they arrived to school after the weekend, this is what they saw:
Day 1:
What could be in that egg? Some said a chicken, others a dinosaur....we would just have to wait and see.
Day 2:
Welcome, little caterpillar! We were intentional about not pointing the board out to anyone but letting them discover what had 'happened' overnight on their own. We had many excited faces when they noticed that the egg had hatched!
Day 3:
Woah! That caterpillar sure is eating lots of leaves. We made sure to add some BM to the leaf this day since it was such a hot topic of conversation examining the live caterpillar containers a few days before....plus, it made me chuckle...BM's are funny.
Day 4:
We have spent many days over the past month talking about a chrysalis and learning to say the word chrysalis. Much to my delight, a few kids noticed the change from overnight and shouted out "CHRYSALIS!!" (Insert proud teacher moment here). We had more discussion about what might come out of the chrysalis...again a few suggestions of large wild animals without wings, but most declared and wanted to share that they knew it was a butterfly!
Day 5:
Boom! Butterfly Bonanza...the kids went crazy and it was so fun to take them thru the stages of butterfly life one day at a time.
We currently have 4 real life chrysalis and a few little caterpillar eggs to keep watch over...waiting in anticipation for the butterflies to emerge and for jolly toddler faces to light up! Photos to come.
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