Butterflies in January??? Kinesthetic Life Cycle Twist

If you teach kindergarten (or early childhood), you are 100% aware of the need for kinesthetic connections to learning EVERY day.

This week, our Journeys 2014 lesson introduced the life cycle of a butterfly. Several years ago, after a rousing round of 10 Monkeys in the Bed, it occurred to me that I could also teach metamorphosis through four simple body movements. And, since we have had a butterfly theme going all week, we made our math journal pages fit into the plan as well! Here are some examples of how our week has unfolded.

First thing each day we work in our math journals. Today we recorded tens and ones, drew/illustrated the number with butterflies, then wrote the teens number. Here you can see a journal page representing the number 13.

We are currently working on writing about the butterfly life cycle, so our writing will become part of this week’s study (and project display) tomorrow! I will post photos of writing this weekend.

The fun part of our day today involved acting out the four stages of the butterfly life cycle.

We have done this each day this week as we read and review, compare and contrast our featured books. I can tell you unequivocally that my students prefer nonfiction selections. We have a nice balance of fiction/nonfiction, however, I notice students attending to and participating in lessons that are based on nonfiction text.

Each student became the egg, the caterpillar, the pupa, and finally the butterfly. This process will be recorded on a life cycle labeling sheet too.

Kinesthetic Stages explained:

1. egg (make yourself into a tight ball

2. caterpillar (lie on the floor and wriggle-wriggle)

3. pupa (hang on to the silk button that is attached to a twig or stem and stand very stiff)

4. butterfly (flap your wings gently)

I will be displaying student picture collage posters alongside their writing and butterfly crafts. Here is an example of the collage.

More this weekend…

The math journal you see the students using is from my Numbers in the Teens CCSS Aligned Journal that can be found in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. This is a separate journal, but the entire year of standards are also available as a bundle.

Maggie’s CCSS Aligned Math Journals

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