Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Butterfly Facts

One of my favorite sites thus far in my preschool website research has been:

I love this site because it includes whole weeks worth of preschool lesson plans based on science themes. The lessons are great because they already include the science and background information you need to tell your kids what's going on, multiple craft ideas, gross motor activities, even snack ideas. I love it--so much so, in fact, that I'll tell you what I do...I print out a lesson plan and do everything in it!  Ha ha! It's the best.

So for the rest of this week I printed out the lesson plan called "Butterflies" and we got to work.  To start us out today, I chose to give the kids all the introductory information from the first part of the lesson plan.

The intro information was really fun to impart to the kids--facts like (the words in THIS color have been  copied straight from the scienceforpreschoolers.com website):


Why do we need butterflies?
Butterflies are the second largest group of pollinators next to honey bees.  
We spent some time talking about pollination at this point. I talked about butterfly legs as being sticky like tape and it picks up the "flower dust" and when the butterfly lands on the next flower, some of the "flower dust" comes off as he rubs his legs on the petals and such. The flowers need each other's "flower dust" to make their fruit. We didn't really get into the why and how of all this stuff. Just some really basic basics.
• What is the difference between a butterfly and a moth?
Most butterflies fly during the day (diurnal). Moths fly at night (nocturnal). Butterflies have small bulbs on the end of their smooth antennae. Moths have “fuzzy” antennae.
We pulled out the ol' google image search at this point to visualize the differences. 
What is the life-cycle of a butterfly?
egg, caterpillar, pupa (cocoon), butterfly.
While we were on the internet, we found a couple of excellent youtube videos that capture the life cycle of a butterfly in that kind of filming where they speed up the time...I can't think what it's called right now, but they were really awesome to watch!
• Where do butterflies live?
In every continent except Antarctica, with the majority in tropical zones.
• What do butterflies eat?
Sweet nectar from fruits and flowers. 
Butterflies don’t have a mouth. They drink nectar through a straw that they can roll up and down, called a proboscis.We pulled out some straws to talk about the butterfly's mouth-the proboscis. The kids curled them up and went around the house trying to uncurl them and then drink out of stuff. It was hilarious! 
They taste with their antennae.
Butterflies can see the colors red, yellow and green. We looked around the room and I had the kids point out the objects they would be able to see the colors of if they were butterflies. 
They don’t have lungs, but breathe through holes, called
spiracles, in their abdomen
My kids were pretty tripped out about this "spiracles" part...so I just touched on it briefly. All in all, it was a really great discussion. The kids loved learning all about butterflies and went about the rest of the day pretending to be butterflies themselves. Adorable :-)




1 comment:

  1. I didn't know half of those things about butterflies. Thank you Mrs Billen!!

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