Butterfly Unit Study

We've been planning to study butterflies for so long, but things just kept coming up. In August, I even got all the books I needed from the library. Then something happened and my order for caterpillars was lost. Finally we received our caterpillars and got to do the study.

Planning Resources:
Ordered caterpillars from Insect Lore
Homeschool Share butterfly lapbook
Homeschool Share The Very Hungry Caterpillar unit
Enchanted Learning

We started by reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other caterpillar books.
Here are the kids telling and acting out the story.



I made these a few years ago from these templates.



Then we read lots of butterfly books. Some of them were: Isabel's House of Butterflies, Are You a Butterfly?, The Butterfly Alphabet, Butterfly and the Bog Beast (Magic School Bus), and Waiting for Wings.


Butterfly Snack

The last caterpillar was making a chrysalis before I realized it so I didn't get any pictures of them before.

Still in the container they came in

5 days later; they've been moved into the butterfly habitat


Notebook Pages:

On the left: questions to answer about caterpillars, life cycle of a butterfly, and a picture of a butterfly they had to label.
On the right: predators, defenses, what butterflies eat, put the life cycle in order, and butterfly observation (I had them draw pictures to show what our caterpillars looked like from the time we got them until they became butterflies).


Butterfly Mosaics:

Egg Carton Caterpillars:

I got each of the kids one of these Butterfly Stained Glass coloring books.


I punched a hole in them, put them through a string, and hung them across the window to catch the sunlight.




We had a visitor on our front door last week.

The girls and their friend caught it and put it in a wagon to push around in the backyard for a while. They learned a lesson about predators when they tried to put a butterfly in with it. The praying mantis gobbled up the poor butterfly.