Turning pasta into butterflies

Mariposa (our social butterfly) really likes doing craft activities, so if I can incorporate that into her learning she's very happy.

Last week we learnt about the life cycle of a butterfly, using Sonlight's Science 3 program. We used the recommended book from the "Real Science for Kids" series, by Gravitas Publications. This was a series of science books I was actually looking into using, so when I found that it was part of the recommended texts Sonlight scheduled, I was very happy. We began using the book at the beginning of the year for Science 3, digressed to another main text, but we're back to this one for a while again now.

An activity suggestion made by Sonlight was to make a butterfly's life cycle mobile, but I decided to vary it a little and use another idea I'd seen and Maestro had done years ago. We used pieces of pasta and an egg carton to make a linear model of a butterfly's life cycle.  First, cut the egg carton so you have four 'cells', then let the child paint it the desired colour.  (Funny .. Mariposa has gone primarily with greens, but Maestro had a deep blue theme going when he did this.)

I didn't have any small macaroni, so a small glass bead was substituted here. It's been glued (craft glue, or hot glue gun with SUPERVISION!) onto a silk leaf, but a real leaf could be used.

Twisty spiral pasta represents the caterpillar (which, Mariposa reminded me, actually eats the egg first, before munching away on the leaves). Some white paint was added to try and represent stripes.  If you have a pipe-cleaner, this could also be stuck in between the ridges.

A pretty shell pasta is chosen next, providing us with an example of a chrysalis. We glued it to a twig and let it dry before sticking it into the egg carton cup 'window'.

Finally, butterfly pasta for the actual butterfly. Both the chrysalis and butterfly were decorated with felt tip pens (Mariposa's choice), but paints could also be used.

We'll blu-tac this to the wall, with a few pictures found on THIS SITE; a pretty reminder of Spring which isn't too far away now.

We're hoping to go on the hunt for some caterpillars again and nurture them into butterflies. We did this last year, but found that we'd actually collected moth caterpillars instead, which wove lovely cocoons then emerged with pretty brown and orange wings. We used a kit I'd purchased. Actually, you would have seen it in use when we caught the locust last year. I'm tempted to look into purchasing an actual chrysalis kit, to ensure we do raise butterflies, but we'll do a nature hunt again first.  Hopefully our buddleia bush will attract many more this Spring.

Should these butterfly enquiries take off, here's a wonderful site to entice children's curiosity: The Children's Butterfly Site.  I've got it bookmarked for Mariposa when we have time to sit at the computer together.

LOL!!!  ~ I'm back again, editing to add that I was just over at Crafty Crow and guess what? She's recommending a site to make a balancing butterfly.  Have a look HERE.  We're definitely going to do this activity (smiles!!)

• Have a look at Cee Lew's post about their pasta butterflies!