Butterfly Week at Our House!

Butterfly Week with a Toddler

This week was so fun (and tiring!) for a couple of reasons; we had our 10 year old niece visiting, J, which was so helpful and G had the time of her life playing with her AND it was Butterfly Week in our household!

One of our good friends put together a monarch habitat for us. We are growing a monarch from egg to butterfly, so we thought it would be fun for G to learn all about them this week, with the help of her cousin. I put together five activities that I thought were sure to be home runs. 

I'm going to be very honest! Instead of talking about how well they went (because they weren't all slam dunks this week!), I'm going to talk about something I humbly learned with each activity. Here are "Just a few Gems":

DAY 1: Counting Butterfly Spots

This activity was designed to have J help G to count out spots for each butterfly, keeping in mind that the butterflies' wings are symmetrical. They could use any colours, but the wings needed to be symmetrical.


What did I learn from this activity? The importance of instructions, hands down. Sitting the toddler down and really explaining and modeling the activity first would have helped. Sometimes I get too excited and we jump right in, hehe. In hindsight, I would have also made sure that the pom poms matched the butterflies that I cut out, or made all of the butterflies the same colour so that it was easier to understand that matching was not the idea. G also enjoyed using the oversized tongs to help her. All in all, it still turned out to be a successful activity. Pom poms and butterflies, what's not to like?





G took creative license with number four.


DAY 2: Play Dough Butterfly Life Cycle


J and G both love play dough. I thought that this would be a fun way to play but also use their creativity to show the different stages of the butterfly life cycle. I quickly drew out the cycle and asked them to fill in the eggs, the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the butterfly however they wanted. I learned that:
1. G is not in Grade 3 and I need to curb my teacher expectations (haha!)
2. I loved watching her creativity and thought process and how she interpreted the eggs, the fun colours she used, the shapes she made, etc.
3. Stepping back and watching/listening is so interesting because sometimes when you listen to respond, you miss listening to understand what they're really doing.


DAY 3: Caterpillar Colour Sort

This was a similar activity to the first week; our regular colour sort. This time, I made a caterpillar and we played outside. G did this one on her own. She looked for items outside (I made sure there were many outside to choose from) that matched each section of the caterpillar. What I humbly learned: If your toddler is not into an activity, act like it's the best activity in the world and start it on your own. This has proven successful for us (and is pretty entertaining for the neighbours, I'm sure, as well!)

DAY 4: Cutting the Lawn

Let's keep the lawn nicely trimmed so the animals and insects don't get caught (Ok... this one is a bit of a stretch!) This activity is an extension from last week and cutting the animals free. I'm trying to add one activity practising with scissors per week. What did I learn? Constant supervision with scissors, obviously! That's it.

DAY 5: Butterfly Spots Painting

We loved this very simple activity! I cut out a butterfly for J and G (a couple extras for G, juuust in case). On one side, we used paint brushes or sponge brushes to make blobs on the paper. (I covered half of G's for her). Then, we simply folded the paper, pressed down, and opened open it up to find beautiful symmetrical butterflies. What I learned: You can never go wrong with painting activities!

*All activities on this site are activities that I have tried. I only recommend trying these activities under constant supervision of the child and at the parent or caregiver's discretion.

We had such a great week and G learned so much from her cousin, who helped her every step of the way! 

I can't wait for next week: All About Sensory Bins! Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by! :)


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