Noticing the Happy

There is an amazing place near us called Butterfly Wonderland, so I knew that I wanted to do a Butterfly week.  I find butterflies to be pretty fascinating anyway, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar is such a classic that I was excited about the chance to dive deeper into it.  I picked up a butterfly puppet for Ava and some plastic butterflies and nets for in the sensory table.  Let me tell you how the rest of the week went.

(From my Theme Week post, here are our theme categories:)

• Field Trip – We went to Butterfly Wonderland and got to walk around as the butterflies flew overhead. In the lobby area, you can see butterflies coming out of their cocoons. We brought Ava’s butterfly puppet and she liked to flutter it around as she watched. Mabel seemed happy just looking around.  I had forgotten that they keep the area pretty humid, so I got a little warm carrying Mabel (and strollers aren’t allowed so that you don’t accidentally run over a butterfly), but it wasn’t too bad. By the time Mabel and I were getting too warm, Ava was ready to go anyways, so it worked out well.

• Sensory Table – This week, I tried oatmeal as the sensory table base and added toy butterflies and nets. The oatmeal smelled amazing but was actually messier than I remembered.  Not impossible, just needing to do a little more vacuum/sweeping than normal. I think part of it was the net idea I had. It looked great, but I don’t think Ava really knew what to do with it.

• Themed Books – Most of our week was centered around The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, but I also pulled some other books from my collection that talked about insects like Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood, The Ants Go Marching by Jeffrey Scherer and The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle.

• Themed Music – Honestly, I didn’t find a butterfly song in time for butterfly week (I completely forgot to look) BUT when I was looking (out of curiosity to see if there was a good one) found this amazing one about the butterfly life cycle.
• Themed TV show or movie – Netflix currently has The Very Hungry Caterpillar – which is just an animated version of the book (plus other Eric Carle stories) and Amazon Prime has a documentary called The Story of the Butterfly that is pretty dry, but Ava amazingly sat through and seemed to enjoy.
• Art projects – We used tissue paper, clothespins and markers to make our own butterflies.  This is such an easy activity (and pretty self-explanatory) so I didn’t make a separate post for it.

Ava loved coloring (and telling me to color) the butterflies, but the best part to me came when they were done. We put on some classical music and had our butterflies dance around.  The tissue paper flutters as you move it, so it was pretty magical.

• Food (optional) – None this week. I think next time we do this, I might grab some butterfly cookie cutters and decorate cookies with Ava.

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