Butterflies!

I decided to really start the butterfly theme tonight that my aunt Cathy sent for us.  I had no idea Maryn would LOVE it all so much.  Here's what we did.

First, Maryn woke from her nap to find little orange slices shaped into butterflies.  Which was something I made up about 2 minutes before she awoke.  Then, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle very, very enthusiastically.  I got some good tips from my friend Laura's website here:  TeachMeToTalk  Sometimes I get into the habit of reading like I'm teaching first grade.  Maryn is bright, but she is still 2, and I need to be a little more enthusiastic when I read to her.  I remember the way Maryn and Tye would be captivated by Miss Laura's animation.  Not that I need to always be like that (that would be exhausting), but here and there I think it's helpful, especially with something as important as reading.

Earlier in the day, we made butterflies out of plastic baggies and hundreds of construction paper squares.  This was a perfect activity for Maryn!  She loves to cut.  Squares are so much fun and easy to learn how to cut from strips.  AND here's the best part--it all got cleaned up!  After the squares are cut, you can have the kids put all the squares in the baggie, then tie the middle up with a pipe cleaner and voila!  Butterfly!  Maryn made THREE.  I literally had to stop her.

Then for Math we did some patterning.  For writing we did a letter B worksheet (Cathy sent us a week long lesson plan and we followed it).  The we did a "discovery table" by making a "butterfly garden" with Easter grass, silk flowers, play caterpillars and our plastic baggie butterflies.  She loves this garden.

The we played our butterfly music and danced around like butterflies.  We pretended to be inside our eggs, hatching, eating the egg, then we crawled around and ate lots and lots and lots of leaves (our leaves were blankets and Josiah, which he really loved getting "eaten"), and then we made a chrysalis (our tunnel) and without any prompting, Maryn burst out of it shouting, "Look Mommy!  I'm a butterfly!"

After that, we sorted some magnetic food and some Colorforms food (I had a Very Hungry Caterpillar Colorforms set from teaching) into food groups.  She loves talking about food groups, courtesy of Sid the Science Kid.  But she doesn't have a clue, really.  Eh, it was fun anyway.  She was very disturbed when she realized The Very Hungry Caterpillar did not have any cereal.  She's also decided that dairy is her favorite food group because, "I like ice cream and cheese," she told me, as she licked the ice cream cone sticker.  Yum.

This is Maryn sleeping before our butterfly fun:

 Cutting, cutting, cutting:

 Cutting....(observe our little classroom in the background.  Ah!  I'm such a loser!  Get a life, Amanda!)

 What did Josiah do the whole time?  He had lots of fun.  He's been pulling up on everything.  He's never satisfied where he is.  He is always diving right on his head to try to get to things clearly out of his reach.  He has been starting to crawl but always wants the next thing.  Or me!  But when I'm holding him, he wants to jump.  Or scratch or be somewhere else.  Agh!

If you zoom in on this pic, you can see he has some bad allergies.

 Oh, she loves this butterfly garden!

 When we were pretending to be butterflies, we took a break to drink nectar (juice) from flowers (plastic cups with construction paper petals).

We had so much fun!  Thank you Aunt Cathy!