Life Cycles Theme Week Two
This week for our life cycles theme, we continued to look at butterflies and we talked about how other insects, like bees and ladybugs, also have life cycles.
When we were out on walks or playing in the garden, we took notice of all the bees and butterflies we saw around.
While we did talk about other insects, we focused on bees mostly. We read
The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons
Which is a very informative book about honey bees. I learned a lot from it in fact. I'm glad that we started with butterflies so that Chobie had a concept of what a life cycle is before we got into bees because they are much more complex, but still have a clear life cycle pattern from egg to pupa to adult. The book explains about the queen bee, drones, and the different kinds of worker bees: nurse bees, house bees, wax making bees, the court, guard bees and forager bees.
One of my favorite things about homeschooling with our kind of hybridized unschool/Waldorf/eclectic approach is seeing Chobie apply what he is learning. Chobie saw a picture of a bee on a tea towel I have and asked me if I thought it was a forager bee.
We also read
The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre Illustrated by Patricia J. Wynne
This allowed us to compare and contrast honey bees and bumble bees.
I made some flying lady bugs to play with. This prompted Chobie to ask a lot of questions about lady bugs. Are they beetles? Are all beetles lady bugs?
We also looked at a couple more books about butterflies including
The Butterfly by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen
Butterflies of the World by Miriam Barum with Photography by Gilles Martin.
This last one is a grown up book, but the photographs are amazing and completely engaging for preschoolers. It shows a huge variety of butterflies from around the world, and also shows pictures of different phases of the lifecycle and touches on migrations too.
During the week we also made our coffee filter butterflies...
Explored making different texture prints in salt dough...
Played pattern blocks...
Practiced writing letters...
What has your homeschool life been like lately? Have you done any great life cycle activities you want to share? Feel free to link to your posts in the comments, I would love to see them!
If you enjoyed this post, PLEASE click here to vote for me on top mommy blogs. I appreciate your support!
When we were out on walks or playing in the garden, we took notice of all the bees and butterflies we saw around.
While we did talk about other insects, we focused on bees mostly. We read
The Honey Makers by Gail GibbonsWhich is a very informative book about honey bees. I learned a lot from it in fact. I'm glad that we started with butterflies so that Chobie had a concept of what a life cycle is before we got into bees because they are much more complex, but still have a clear life cycle pattern from egg to pupa to adult. The book explains about the queen bee, drones, and the different kinds of worker bees: nurse bees, house bees, wax making bees, the court, guard bees and forager bees.
One of my favorite things about homeschooling with our kind of hybridized unschool/Waldorf/eclectic approach is seeing Chobie apply what he is learning. Chobie saw a picture of a bee on a tea towel I have and asked me if I thought it was a forager bee.
We also read
The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre Illustrated by Patricia J. Wynne
This allowed us to compare and contrast honey bees and bumble bees.
I made some flying lady bugs to play with. This prompted Chobie to ask a lot of questions about lady bugs. Are they beetles? Are all beetles lady bugs?
We also looked at a couple more books about butterflies including
The Butterfly by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen
Butterflies of the World by Miriam Barum with Photography by Gilles Martin.
This last one is a grown up book, but the photographs are amazing and completely engaging for preschoolers. It shows a huge variety of butterflies from around the world, and also shows pictures of different phases of the lifecycle and touches on migrations too.
During the week we also made our coffee filter butterflies...
Explored making different texture prints in salt dough...
Played pattern blocks...
Practiced writing letters...
What has your homeschool life been like lately? Have you done any great life cycle activities you want to share? Feel free to link to your posts in the comments, I would love to see them!
If you enjoyed this post, PLEASE click here to vote for me on top mommy blogs. I appreciate your support!
Gail Gibbons! Hurrah!
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