Monarch Caterpillars

At one point we had 2 monarch caterpillars living in our science aquarium.  Unfortunately, they had died over the weekend.  Thankfully, two of my friends in the class brought in a caterpillar, which they had found over the weekend.  This caterpillar has been hungry!  He has been eating non-stop, which makes us think that he is going to be thinking about making his chrysalis. 

Since school began, the children have learned a lot about monarch butterflies, including the stages of the life cycle and learning about the word metamorphosis (ask your child what this word means). Prior to learning about monarch butterflies, the children shared what they knew about monarch butterflies (schema).  They also shared what questions they had about monarch butterflies. 

Before our first two caterpillars had died, we looked closely at them and shared what we had noticed.  Then, we put our "science lab coats" on to become scientists so that we were ready to draw a monarch caterpillar in our science notebooks.  We talked about the importance of using  the exact colors to represent the caterpillars as we wanted our drawings to truly represent the caterpillars.  The children did an amazing job drawing their caterpillars and labeling their drawings!  Their drawings were even shared with other kindergarten classes as examples. 

 We read the book Monarch Butterfly by Gail Gibbons twice.  During the first and second reading, we were listening for the word metamorphosis and learning about the life cycle.  After the second reading, the children illustrated the life cycle on paper using markers.  See if your child can name the four different stages in the life cycle of a monarch butterfly.