Social-Emotional Development
Calming Strategy
Butterfly Breathing
Encourage your child to pretend to be a butterfly. Have them inhale as they lift their butterfly wings (arms) and exhale as they lower them. Encourage your child to slow down their breathing. Repeat a few times.
Cognitive Development
Counting Butterfly Eggs
Write the numerals 1-6 on the bottom of 6 cupcake liners. Encourage your child to use tongs or tweezers to place the correct number of pom poms (butterfly eggs) into each numbered cupcake paper. If you don’t have pom poms you can use small bits of crumpled paper.
Language Development
Life Cycle of a Butterfly
Visit Brightpath Storytime on Facebook or Instagram to listen to the story Monarchs. Write out the word metamorphosis on a piece of paper and discuss the meaning. Clap the syllables in the word metamorphosis with your child. Encourage your child to circle the letter m in the word metamorphosis.
Physical Literacy
Roll to the Goal
Choose two objects to use to set up a goal. Mark out a starting line. Invite your child to practice rolling a large ball underhand at the goal. You can adjust the difficulty of the activity by changing the goal size or the distance from the goal.
Creative Activity
Butterfly Sun Catcher
Cut out a butterfly shape from wax paper. Cut or tear small pieces of tissue paper and tin foil. Mix white glue with equal parts water. Invite your child to decorate the butterfly shape by gluing the tissue paper and foil squares onto the wax paper butterfly. When it dries, hang it in a window.
Additional Resources
Visit NASA’s website to view a collection of stories, games, videos and at-home activities for children in grades K-12.
https://www.nasa.gov/stem/forstudents/k-4/index.html
Kate Messner.com: A collection of favourite authors and illustrators share resources that include video read-aloud, drawing and writing lessons