Butterflies!An Introduction

This week, we are talking about butterflies! To get started, we took a couple of field trips. During breakfast, I asked Jonah if he's ever seen butterflies in our yard. I asked him what colors of butterflies he's seen? Were they big or little? How many has he seen? What were they doing when he saw them? Where were they?

Then we headed outside to see if we could observe butterflies in our yard.

 

We looked all around our yard. While we were able to observe quite a bit of nature, we only saw one white butterfly, for a fleeting moment.

Because we didn't see very many butterflies in our yard, we headed to the Cleveland Zoo where an exhibit called "Flutter" puts visitors in a green house full of beautiful butterflies, and demonstrates how butterflies change from caterpillars to elegant winged creatures.

Both of the kids enjoyed seeing the butterflies flit from the flowers and trees inside. While we were there, I asked the same semi-open ended questions: What colors are we seeing? Where do the butterflies like to land? How many can you count? What are they doing? Can you see a big one? Can you find a little one?

I am really glad that we started this "unit" by observing butterflies up close. Jonah seems to be inspired to learn about them, and excited to do more activities involving these lovely little creatures.