Caterpillar to Butterfly

This project has created much excitement from children ranging from one to six year of age. We purchased some tiny caterpillars and watched as they grew bigger and bigger, checking them each day and being totally fascinated by them crawling around. 

 After several weeks our caterpillars began to adopt their J shape, hanging from the roof of the pot and changed into a chrysalis. We transferred them into our net waiting for them to hatch into butterflies. 

After several more weeks and daily checks by the children one of our butterflies emerged, closely followed by the rest. The children helped to feed them sugar solution through dropping it onto flowers within their net. We also fed them orange but, contrary to popular belief they were pretty unimpressed with this! 

Finally, once we had admired our new arrivals it was time to let them go. The children opened up the net and, giving them a helping hand, off they flew. I was instantly asked when we were getting more caterpillars!

Mini Beast Sensory Tub

This activity kept children ranging from 1 to 4 years of age well entertained for a wet afternoon. I constructed a sensory tray in line with our current theme of mini-beasts. 

I used some rice and coloured it green then added some leaves, pebbles and some mini-beast toys. This was a great success and, as ever, prompted some really fun imaginative play. 

Initially the boys were fascinated with making the beasts sit on the pebbles and then tried to hide them using the leaves. For our one year old, simply exploring the texture of the rice was fun as well as picking out all the pebbles!

The addition of spoons and bowls led to the mini-beasts being fed their dinner as well as the boys deciding that the beasts were poorly and needed looking after. 

Tissue Paper Snail

We have spent a lot of time out and about looking at various 'mini beasts' in our outdoor environment so I thought it would be fun to turn it into a sticking activity.

I presented the children with a piece of paper shaped like a snail shell and the snail body. They used the squeeze glue to cover their snail and then set to work with the different colours of tissue paper to create their colourful snails. When they had finished the children then placed some googly eyes and some antennae made of pipe cleaners on their snails. 

This activity was really good for enhancing fine motor skills and we talked about how the snails move around outdoors as well as what they eat and where they live.