We have been learning about butterflies during the last month with this Butterfly Unit. We have enjoyed watching our chrysalis open and watch our butterfly fly off over the fence.
First off, we read some books on butterflies, while we were waiting for our chrysalis to hatch.
Then we completed a painting about the Butterfly Life Cycle. You can find this on Artventure. This is an amazing art program for kids, which we currently have a subscription.
The following butterfly picture can also be found on Artventure.
As can this caterpillar art picture.
Then, we kept a close eye on our chrysalises which we purchased from Butterfly Skyes Bugshop.
In the picture below, one of the chrysalises were dead and we are currently awaiting a replacement.
The other chrysalis hatched! The boys were so excited.
It only took a couple of days for the chrysalis to open and the butterfly to emerge.
We woke up to this sight one morning. It must have only just happened and we continued to watched it most of the day.
The boys took turns at recording it on our very old video camera.
It took many hours for the butterfly to get the blood in its wings and get ready to fly.
Eventually it started walking around the cage flapping its wings, which is really hard to photograph.
As per the instructions we received with the chrysalis, you should release the butterfly for only 24 hours after it is ready to fly.
As it was getting late, we didn’t want to let the poor butterfly go in the dark, so we waited until early the next morning to let it go.
It took some time for it the leave the cage, but when it did, it took off pretty quickly.
Straight over our 6ft high colour bond fence!
To continue on with our learning, the boys painted a cardboard shaped butterfly and added blue cellophane in the wings.
They did some butterfly graphing.
And made a 3d butterfly lifecycle. For this, they glued on green leaves cut out of paper and used sequins for the butterfly eggs.
The caterpillar is a green pipe cleaner wound around a pencil, the chrysalis is a black pipe cleaner cut in half. I wound the pipe cleaner around the cotton ball once for them so it would stay and then they painted on some orange paint.
The butterfly is a pipe cleaner wrapped around circles of tissue paper that were scrunched up a bit.
These butterfly masks were made from cardboard which they enjoyed decorating.
A flower cut out that they painted and a butterfly (same cutout as before).
And a butterfly symmetry painting.
For this, I just printed out a blank colouring page of a butterfly that I found on google and they painted one side and folded the page in half, pushing the paint onto the other side.
Many of the activities we used, you will find in the butterfly packs below.
Materials Needed
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scissors
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eraser
This Butterfly Unit is aimed at children in grades one through four. It contains 118 pages of fun and learning all about butterflies. There are sections that focus on the Monarch and the Painted Lady Butterflies.
In this printable pack, there are many activities that include learning:
- Life Cycle Posters
- Butterfly Anatomy
- Butterfly Vocabulary
- Butterfly Eggs
- Caterpillars
- Chrysalis
- Graphing
- Symmetry
- Alphabet Butterfly Book
- Monarch Butterflies
- Painted Lady Butterflies
- Word Search
- Simple Addition
- Caterpillar Alphabet and Numbers
- Opposite words
- Nouns
- Adjectives
- Creative Writing Pages
- Answers
More Butterfly Resources
- Butterfly Sensory Bottle
- Butterfly Counting Mats
- Butterfly Identification Pack
- Butterfly Notebooking Pages
- Butterfly Life Cycle Cards
- Butterfly Lapbook
- Butterfly Printable Pack
To grab a copy of this printable pack, click on the link below:
Printable Monster Truck Board Game