Creating caterpillar and butterfly crafts with your students will help you introduce your unit on butterflies. Students create caterpillars by cutting circles out of construction paper and gluing them together. Have the students draw faces and use pipe cleaners for the antennae. For butterflies, give your students craft sticks for the bodies, cut the wings out of construction paper and help your students glue the two together. Students decorate the wings and draw faces on the craft sticks. Pipe cleaners are used for the antennae.
Ask you students to tell you what they know about caterpillars and butterflies. Read books that describe the life cycle of a butterfly to your students. A few examples are "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle, "From Caterpillar to Butterfly" by Deborah Heiligman and "Waiting for Wings" by Lois Elhert. Discuss the book with your students and compare what they knew before with what they know now.
Acting out the life cycle of a butterfly will help the kinesthetic learners in your class understand the process of how a caterpillar goes through a metamorphosis to change into a butterfly. Have your students curl up in the fetal position on the floor to represent the egg stage. Then your students wiggle across the floor as caterpillars. To represent the chrysalis, students squat with their heads down and wrap their arms around their legs. Finally, your students emerge as butterflies and flap their wings around the room.
Raise live caterpillars in your classroom and watch as they transform into butterflies. The caterpillars will double in size every day until they make their chrysalises. Once in their chrysalises, they will be still for about a week before starting to shake. After the butterflies emerge, your students can observe them for a few days and then set them free. Have your students observe the caterpillars/butterflies every day and record what they see in books. Children can write or draw pictures.