Butterfly Spring

Well as this spring is well over and summer is full force I thought I'd finally get around to posting about our annual butterfly project. Every year our kids look forward to receiving caterpillar larvae from Insect Lore to watch them become full grown caterpillars then change to the pupa form (chrysallis) and become a beautiful monarch butterfly.
I love to supplement this hands on activity with a great classic book like The Very Hungry Caterpillar 
by Eric Carle. I also love to provide worksheets on labeling the body parts of the caterpillar as well as the buttefly.  This is a great activity from ages 3 and up! You can go more in depth with older children. They can do a science project (observing) along with this activity.

Natural Sea Sponge Painting

Materials: Natural Sea Sponge, Watercolor paper, Watercolor paint

Use natural sea sponge to make these fall or spring trees!

Quote-Maria Montessori

“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.” - Maria Montessori

Summer Activity- Ice Block full of toys

A great idea for a hot summer day! Take a large plastic bowl and fill with small toys and water. Let freeze overnight and dump out the block of ice on your driveway or porch. You can let those little curious fingers chisel the ice with their plastic tools to search for their treasures. Another idea would be to let the children poor water over the ice to see the ice become smooth and glossy.

Colored Water Fun

What an easy and fun activity for preschool and Kindergarten aged children. You just need 4 glasses of water, food coloring, dropper and some paper/crayons to extend your activity to a mixing color lesson.

Botany

Here is a great link to have a botany scavenger hunt, keeping in the theme of discovering botany and investigating nature! Spring is an awesome opportunity to introduce this.

Botany Scavenger Hunt

Dissecting a Flower

Dissection of an Iris

This is a wonderful activity for spring! Walking into the local grocery store I became overwhelmed with the beauty of the colors in the floral department. I decided I could not pass by this colorful display without purchasing a bundle of flowers. I realized I could enjoy these blooms and also create a lesson in botany for my kids. I found some wonderful worksheets on Enchanted Learning. I printed a flower anatomy chart and a label the flower worksheet for my 9 year old to use as reference.

She carefully pulled apart the flower with tweezers or her fingers and placed them onto a prelabeled paper provided for her, using the flower part diagram as reference.

The only tools I provided her with were some tweezers, tape, scissors and magniflying glass. She neatly taped the flower parts onto a large white piece of paper. The completed project looks like a piece of art!