Russell Ramblings: B is for Butterfly

MJ in her chrysalis

From playing the hungry caterpillar to playing migrating to Mexico, there's been a lot of butterfly talk around the house.  We studied the letter B and butterflies this past week.

We began the week by mailing our voucher that came with our My Father's World curriculum to Insect Lore for our cup of Painted Lady caterpillars.  They are growing so rapidly, but none of them have entered into the chrysalis stage yet.  If you are not familiar with Insect Lore, check them out.  These caterpillars came in a cup with food already in it.  We do not have to do anything until they are in their chrysali.  Then we remove the lid (to which they should attach) and put it in the butterfly house to await the miracle of a new butterfly.

MJ inspects our 5 Painted Lady caterpillars

We read many, many books about butterflies and learned all about their life cycle.  Our favorite craft was painting butterflies on brown paper shopping bags.  The instructions in my manual said to cut the bottom off a brown paper shopping bag to get a large rectangle of brown paper to paint a butterfly on.  As I was doing it, I almost chopped off the handles, but decided to leave them on.  Well, they made such great handles to hold onto while we flew our butterflies all over the backyard & the house this week!  I had the boys choose a particular butterfly to paint.  AJ chose an Anise Swallowtail, CJ chose a Zebra Swallowtail, and JJ did a Painted Lady.  MJ just played with paint & enjoyed being part of the mess!

In math, we talked about symmetry and made symmetrical butterflies out of play dough.

One day we pretended we were butterflies from hatching from the egg, to eating & eating as a caterpillar, to making a chrysalis, & hatching as a butterfly.

All throughout the week, we talked about how God can make us new.  Just like the amazing transformation that takes place from a caterpillar to a butterfly, Jesus can doing a transforming work in our lives.  We talked about the "old man" and the "new man" as we read 2 Corinthians 5:17 - Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

​Thanks for stopping by!

This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.