Butterfly Metamorphosis

photo from those northern skies

I just loved this little butterfly life cycle project the minute I saw it at those northern skies. It is so simple but so attractive and just enough for little ones to be creative and yet show that they know the process of complete metamorphosis.

We didn't have paper plates for it, so I just traced a plate on a piece of cardstock for the circle. I helped them divide the circle into roughly even quarters. They then stamped a leaf onto the first two sections and glued a small twig to the third section. They then glued the appropriate beans or pasta for each of the sections. Quentin had the idea to put a bean in the pupa shell to represent the pupa inside the chrysalis. It is like a cut-away cross-section. 

James likes to add multiple in his picture. While he was working, he told me about the fact that a butterfly will lay a lot of eggs, but with all the predators, there ends up being perhaps only one adult butterfly, effectively narrating this fact of nature. I am going to encourage them to both label the sections and paint or use markers to color at least the butterfly once the glue is dry.