Here we are of day two of bugs. My girls really like butterflies so we had another day of fun learning about butterflies!
Today's activities were focused on how butterflies eat but because today is April Fools Day we started off reading Arthur's April Fools. Around here it's a fun day mostly because it's Grandpa's birthday but the girls are getting old enough to try to start learning about the fun side of April Fools too. This book was okay, but I used it mainly as a topic for discussion of how our pranks or tricks need to be fun for everyone, especially the person you're pranking. We talked about how it's important to do this while not disrespecting the person or making them feel embarrassed in any way. We just want jokes that get a little laugh from everyone. So, we used this book as a way to talk about how we could have done things differently. We mentioned how Binky Barnes was trying to belittle and bully people and that should never be our intention and how Arthur maybe shouldn't have tricked and embarrassed Binky on the stage in front of everyone but how later he does a more private prank so he would get a good innocent laugh all by himself, at the end of the book. (Another disclaimer on the book is that I taped a page together to skip Arthur's nightmare. Not pictures I want my daughter seeing, but you don't even notice anything in the story, it just skips to the next day.) I'd love to hear if you have any good books on April Fools Day that you read.
After our book we did a simple bug stamping art project. I found these bugs at Hobby Lobby but here are some similar ones on Amazon if you're looking. The girls had to match the stamps in the right colors of paint we had. The ladybug was red, grasshopper green, bee was yellow...etc. They did really good.
Lastly, our focus for the day was learning about how butterflies eat. We talked about how they find flowers and then when they land on the flower they unroll their really long tongue called a proboscis. Then they put their tongue way deep down in the middle of the flower and suck up the sweet nectar.
I reinforced this by having my girls pretend to be butterflies and drink nectar from a flower. I had them color a card stock flower shape, making sure to be a nice yellow center, sweet with nectar to drink. Then I put a small hole in the middle. The girls and I love to make passion tea lemonade, so we made some to be our nectar. Then the girls put the straws in their mouths and had to poke it into the middle of the flower to sip some sweet nectar. This was really fun for my older one to actually keep the 'tongue' in her mouth and move it up and down for a drink. But my littlest one still enjoy sipping up the nectar from the straw.
If you want to add a bit more fun for older ones and don't care about germs in a family you can try to set up a few flowers outside and have the butterflies fly around from flower to flower sipping the nectar. We have all been fighting a little nose congestion lately so I didn't want to pass germs around right now but this would have been so much fun.
Well, I hope your kids enjoy learning about how butterflies eat. If you missed my last post on butterflies you can check out our other butterfly activities here. Also, keep a look out for some more buggy adventures coming up!
God Bless you and all your critters!
Heather Joy
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