Monday, April 11, 2011

Best Science Study All Year

Today we started the science unit that Grace loves the most. A life cycle unit. This is the second year we have ordered caterpillars and raised painted lady butterflies. Looks like this year we will have three viable butterflies. The caterpillars grow incredibly fast. I would suspect in 3-5 days they will start hanging from the top to start the formation of their chrysalis. I choose to order The Live Butterfly Activity Book from Insect Lore when we ordered the caterpillars to be our main spine for lessons but recently bought back our Flying Creatures book that we did for science last year. The Flying Creatures book has an excellent unit at the end of the book about the order Lepidoptera.
The lessons I have planned should get us through the month of April. Today Grace drew a diagram of a caterpillar and labels all the parts. We also observed what was happening with the caterpillars and went over what she was seeing, such as: evidence of molting, food supplies, silk and defecation. Now that the caterpillars have increased in size she could also see the true legs and false legs.


1 comment:

Nekkid Chicken said...

We are still awaiting our butterfly larva, ants, and ladybug beetles. It is hard to tell my six year old to wait; he has developed a crush on the postal lady. LOL