Caterpillars to Butterflies

Sometimes I feel like my little kindergartners are caterpillars at the beginning of the school year, then as the year progresses they grow and grow and finally in spring they turn into butterflies AKA 1st Graders.

Can you tell how much I really enjoy this time of year.  We are in full swing to Spring in our room. Our caterpillars arrived last Wednesday and already they have doubled in size.  We are learning all about butterflies and plants and Earth day too.  Everything seems to be occurring all at once.  Our caterpillars from insect Lore arrived last week, they have tripled in size already.  This picture was taken on Friday.  They are much bigger than this now.

To start I've been reading a few of my favorite books to the class.  You can all of these on Amazon.  I really like the Seeds of the Milkweed.  It is a fun, repetitive text that builds.  The book was created by a second grade class.

We have also been reading my latest emergent reader from my All About the Butterfly pack.  It is similar to the reader in my Look at the Butterfly pack, but the new reader has more text to read.  When I showed my original version to my teaching partner she thought it was too simple.  I had to agree.  When I made it a few years ago, it was just right for those kids.  The group I have now are reading machines.

This week we are working on butterfly mobiles.  This is also included in my All About Butterflies packet.  We watercolored all 4 pieces .  We will cut them out, attach the yarn and hang in our classroom.  They will look fabulous for open house next week.  I'll take pictures when they are assembled and share on Instagram and Facebook.

We are also working on writing our own versions of the life cycle of the butterfly.  We are writing to picture prompts and then will assemble each page into a book.

This week we are also planting green beens and learning about ways to protect the Earth- We are so busy and the week is  only half over.  If you have other books about caterpillars and Butterflies, please share with me.  I'm always looking for new books.

Have a great rest of the week!