Butterflies


Studying symmetry and the parts of a butterfly is exciting when you have all the right tools! We toured Butterfly World with all the first grade classes, viewed a butterfly with our digital microscope, found the plants in our garden that caterpillars love to eat, created graphic organizers of butterfly facts with Kidspiration software and had a ball handpainting, pasting, finding facts cutting and gluing a butterfly bulletin board on display in the ACES lab.

Click here to view pictures from Butterfly World

Resource Materials:
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Activity Sheets from Teacher Created Materials Thematic Unit #268 - Creepy Crawlies

Vocabulary:
Scales, Wing, Abdomen, Thorax, Antenna, Head, Leg, Symmetry

Students are given a Butterfly Book with many pages to color, questions to answer and puzzles to solve. The main content of the book is listed below:
A butterfly has six legs.
A butterfly has three main body parts - the head, thorax, and abdomen.
A butterfly has two wings and two antennae.
Caterpillars are baby butterflies or moths.
The caterpillars eat plants.
A butterfly caterpillar makes a chrysalis.
A moth caterpillar makes a cocoon.
Then, the adult butterfly comes out!
A butterfly goes through four life cycles - from a tiny egg, to a caterpillar, to a pupa and finally to a butterfly.
Caterpillars can become a moth or a butterfly.
Butterflies are insects.
A butterfly rests with its wings up.
A moth rests with its wings laying flat.

Activity: Students were given symmetrical butterfly halves and worked together to find the matching pair of wings. Facts were written on each set of wings to help students gather information about butterflies. Following are some of the butterfly facts we covered:
The average lifespan is about forty days. The stages of complete metamorphosis are egg, larva, pupa and adult. There are 700 species of butterflies in North America. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants. Antarctica is the only continent without butterflies. The largest butterfly is 12 inches. Millions of overlapping scales give butterflies their color. Butterflies can see red, green and yellow. The longest lifespan for butterflies is 9-10 months. Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees. The tiniest butterfly is 1/8 inch. The butterfly's tongue is called a proboscis. The Brimstone butterfly has the longest lifespan. The butterfly's eyes are compound eyes. Butterflies have three body parts the head, thorax and abdomen. There are 24,000 species of butterflies. Some moths fly 25 miles per hour. Butterflies have their skeletons outside of their bodies. Some butterflies fly 12 miles per hour. Most of their food comes from nectar. Many butterflies taste with their feet. Florida has 120 species of butterflies.

Back