Flutter like a Butterfly

At First Steps Nursery our preschool children have been completing a very special job over the past couple of weeks. We had an exciting delivery of our very own caterpillars!

The children were very excited to watch the life cycle of our caterpillars and they have been making sure they have all they need to grow and blossom into beautiful butterflies. This has sparked lots of circle time conversations and activities based around the topic such as; reading ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and creating our own caterpillar and butterfly art work to display in our room.

 The children watched eagerly as the caterpillars ate lots of food and began to grow and then change into chrysalides. Once the chrysalides had hardened we gently moved them into their pop-up butterfly habitat. The children were then very patient as we had to wait for ten whole days for all of our butterflies to emerge.

This was a fantastic opportunity and we were lucky enough to see this happen for several of our butterflies.

 Once all of our butterflies had emerged we made sure they had plenty of food included sliced orange to give them lots of energy to adventure into the outside world. Tiff and the children carefully removed each butterfly from their habitat and held them on our fingers until they were ready to fly off on their new adventures.

 Watching and learning about the whole life cycle of the caterpillars to Butterflies has been a fantastic learning experience for our preschool children. They have gained further knowledge and understanding of the world as they learn about the different stages in the life cycle. It has also been a great opportunity for the use of new language and for the children to ask lots of questions to gain new knowledge. Our Preschool team at First Steps Nursery have also loved giving the children new experiences and we certainly think this is one they won’t forget.