This Little Project: snack

Originally shared at abcand123learning.com

We are enjoying a lot of butterfly fun at our house right now. We rescued a monarch from the middle of the road this past week and have been watching a friend raise some monarchs from egg to chrysalis. Today I want to share some ideas that go along with that beautiful transformation from caterpillar to butterfly that will get you MOVING and enjoying MUSIC too!

My kids and I have been hanging out at our local butterfly exhibit. We can't get enough of them...

It's a miracle every time!

This movie shows the transformation of of a butterfly from an egg to a monarch butterfly. It's perfect to watch before learning and singing the songs below.

This movie is a song about the life cycle of a butterfly, with pictures. It's short and easy for young kids to sing. (Note: usually the "house"a butterfly makes is referred to as a chrysalis and the one a moth makes is a cocoon.)

We made some fun Butterfly Finger Puppets to fly around the room.

By using pieces from a glove they are easy to make and slip on little fingers.

For directions to make yours, go here.

Here is another song about the butterfly life cycle-no pictures, but the kids would love coloring this one to go with it. Just cut out each piece and glue to it a popsicle stick and hold it up for each part of the song.

I love this way of acting out the life cycle. You just need a blanket, some butterfly wings, and some "leaves to eat". This is a wonderful way to incorporate movement into learning.

A Snack Craft! is a fun way to do some hands-on learning. This gummy worm is the caterpillar and then the kids turn him into a butterfly. For peanut allergies, substitute marshmallow cream for the peanut butter spread. Directions here.

How do you learn about butterflies and the world around you?
I love to hear your ideas!

How many ways can you celebrate 100? This is our 4th year celebrating the 100th day of the year. Every time we have our "party" I try to think up ways for the kids to learn while they think they are playing.

This year the kids are another year older and we were able to add a spanish twist and counted in spanish, since they can already count in english by 1's, 5's, 10's, etc. I used the foam letters (above) for a visual for Kay. She always does better if she has something to touch. I know part of that is her age, and part of it is just her :)

This year, I got started a little early with this book for Kay. I didn't know how hard it would be for her to work through 100 words. But it was a fun goal. The book was too long for her to read in one sitting, but we used it over a week for reading time and she got all 100 words!

Kay is a preschooler, but she likes to read. And the fun thing about this book is that the dog's words are red and the man's words are black (or maybe the other way around). So I read one color of word and she looked for "her words" in the other color. That helped keep her interest in it.

Jay is in kindergarten and LOVES math. He's been working through his times tables (which I have a bunch of projects to share about sometime...) and so we decided to see how close we could get to 100 with multiplying 4's, 7's, 8's, and 9's. The legos really helped keep his interest with {this little project}.

Kay and Jay each took a side of this lego plate and used the "4" lego bricks to see how many it took to made 100. The legos let you "touch" each number, which was good for Kay.

We used the "6" lego brick with the "1" for the 7's.

One thing that Jay noticed from this activity was that it was hard to land right on 100. Not everything divides evenly.

Then I got out some of our dice to play some games with.

The Roll to 100 is an adding game.

Jay wrote down each roll and added it to the roll before. The goal was to land right on 100 and not go over. This is much easier said, than done!

He played it over and over, determined to get it. And he finally did!

I gave the dice to Kay too to play with. She's not into adding double digits yet, but she wrote down each roll and practiced her handwriting and knowing what each number was.

For the Roll to $1.00 Game, I got out our coin dice that I made (from a previous little math project). Again, Jay wrote down each roll and added it to the one before. The goal: try to get to $1.00 without going over.

Again, easier said than done! But we turned it into an adding and subtracting game after we changed the rules so that if you went over you could do one more roll and subtract it to see if you landed on 100 cents.

Jay really enjoyed both math dice games and played them again and again.