The children have been helping create our interactive caterpillar display. Many children wrote their name on our June calendar to predict when they thought the caterpillars would emerge from their cocoon. Some of our children read about the Painted Ladies to see how long their transformation would be so they could have an accurate prediction!
The children drew pictures of what they thought the caterpillars would look like as butterflies. We had not yet done research on Painted Ladies when the drawing were made so it's interesting to note that many children appeared to use their prior butterfly knowledge and made theirs look like Monarchs.
We have many books about butterflies, caterpillars and lifecycles in an appealing rustic basket. The stages of the lifecycle are pinned to the sides for easy display and access by the children.
Fun mini manipulatives showing the different stages of the caterpillar/butterfly have been fun to play with in our mini playscapes as well as sequence to tell the story of the lifecycle.
Similar to our planting journals, the children are recording their ideas and observations in the form of communal butterfly journals. Whenever a child would like to share their thoughts they are invited to add a page to these booklets.
We also have lifecycle specific vocabulary cards that the children can access when writing in the journals. These have pictures on one side and kid print on the other for easy writing support. Children can copy the word directly or refer to it after sounding it out independently.
We can't wait to add more child-created materials to the centre as the caterpillars develop and we have deeper understandings of this wonder!
