The Makings of a Butterfly Garden

Our butterfly garden and caterpillars arrived in the mail and our journey begins as we watch these caterpillars turn into butterflies! I'm not sure who's more excited me or the girls!




The girls have been loving the caterpillars!! Every morning they wake up and want to see the caterpillars.

They are obviously very curious about the caterpillars and the process of them turning into butterflies.  To learn more about the process we read this book From Caterpillar to Butterfly by Deborah Heiligman





To pick up on their growing interest we also found some pictures of caterpillars online and printed them out for the girls to observe.




We talked about the different characteristics we saw and I encouraged the girls to describe the various caterpillars.

After observing the real caterpillars and the pictures the girls created their own representations of caterpillars using mixed media of oil pastels and water colors.  When I taught with the Reggio Emilia Philosophy we did many projects that included mixed media, observational drawings and creating representations of what was being studied.

First they used the oil pastels to draw a caterpillar.



My 2 year old wanted to draw a caterpillar too and in her mind it was indeed a caterpillar!




Next they used watercolors to paint over the oil pastels. Mixing these two types of media creates a cool effect and texture when dried.




Mallory's completed caterpillar! She loved this project and I think we will do it again with butterfly pictures once our caterpillars turn into butterflies.



Be sure to check back as we document the growth of our caterpillars turning into butterflies!

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Earth Day Planting

Weekly Kids Co-op is up and running and there are loads of Earth Day activities so be sure to check them out!

We are continuing our Every Day is Earth Day fun and this week we painted terra cotta pots and planted seeds!





I bought these super cheap planting pots from Michael's and the girls painted the outside of them.



We read this book "Seeds, Seeds, Seeds" by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace and talked about all different types of seeds.

We explored the seeds we were going to plant. The girls touched them and we talked about color, texture, and size of the seeds.



We talked about everything the seed would need to grow, water, sunlight, and soil. My 3 year old helped dig up some soil for our pots.



We watered the seeds and now are waiting anxiously for them to grow!!




By the way, do you love the Target $1 aisle as much as I do? I found all these goodies in the $1 aisle and they are perfect for our Earth Day activities!









Check out more Earth Day activities at the weekly Kids Co-op below!