Butterflies and Life Cycles, Oh My!

Yikes! Time got away from me, and I haven't been blogging. Sorry about that. So here's the scoop: I am leaving my school, where I have been for the last eight years, and I am going to a brand new school! Brand new, as in, they are still building it! I am so excited! I have gotten to tour it twice (the first time I've ever worn a hard hat!), and it is absolutely beautiful. Actually, it's quite messy and full of construction junk, but it's going to be absolutely beautiful. So, along with all the usual end of the year requirements, I have been packing up my room (how did I collect so much stuff?) and working with my new staff to get our beautiful new school off and running to a great start in the fall.

I met with my new third grade team this morning. We looked at our state standards and created a year-long plan for next year. We are starting off the year with a life cycles unit in science. Each student gets a caterpillar to observe:

(We order Painted Lady butterflies from Insect Lore. They are safe to release in the wild in our area, but be sure to check out your area if you decide to do something similar.)

Once the caterpillar has formed a chrysalis, it goes into an aquarium. We hot glue the lids to some poster board like this:

And then leave the poster board on the top of the tank (I usually tape the far edge so that you can lift it like a lid):

The tank is empty in this picture, but I usually put flowers, sticks and yogurt cup lids with sugar water in the tank right before the butterflies come out.

We also give each student a butterfly book so they can learn about and track the growth of their caterpillar. Here is a caterpillar observation sheet which you can have for FREE because I am super happy with all of the awesomeness going on in my life right now and am feeling generous! Oh, yeah, and also because it's SUMMER! :)