Caterpillars and Butterflies

Last week we looked at caterpillars and butterflies and had some fun learning about life cycles, singing songs and matching coloured caterpillars to the right butterfly. We even had butterfly fairy bread!
We started the week off by making a caterpillar out of pompoms and googly eyes. Next we made a cocoon for him by wrapping wool around a cardboard tube. The next step was to make a set of colourful wings from a coffee filter to complete the transformation, but Eamon didn't want his caterpillar to change, so he's stuck as a fluffy caterpillar with a lovely cocoon, but no hope of becoming a butterfly! He was happy enough to make another butterfly though and joyfully flew it around the room.

Eamon's butterfly

Another morning we worked hard making a butterfly life cycle book with beautiful drawings of leaves for the egg to sit on, a great caterpillar with lots of legs, another caterpillar in his cocoon, and a pretty butterfly carefully punched out of card.

On one of our outings searching for a playground we also happened across a butterfly house in one of the malls which fitted right in. There were eggs, a few caterpillars, lots of chrysalis's and plenty of butterflies hiding around if you looked carefully. Even some nice big stick insects!

A really fun set of activities. Next week is fishing, which Eamon loves, so should be good!

Cowboys!

Activities have been a bit hit and miss the last couple of weeks due to moving countries but I've been trying to grab moments here and there when Eamon isn't too tired. This week we started looking at Cowboys and talking about the wild west. Eamon thought this was great and was really happy with the cowboy costume he made!

Of course a cowboy needs a good horse, so here's Eamon with his.

We also talked about the wild west and what it was like (Eamon now talks about the wild west of Australia), what you might find there....things like sand and cacti....and how the pioneers who moved there lived (in wagons, cooking their food on campfires). Here're a few more things we made.

Activities

As a way of keeping Eamon occupied and avoiding having to play yet another game of "birthdays" or "eggs on spoons", I have started engaging in more structured play - what we are calling "Activities". We are roughly following a preschool curriculum called Fireflies from Funshine Express which contains lots of craft, songs and games (mostly because I'm too lazy to make up everything myself). When we have the opportunity, I also put out trays of things to do for Eamon which change every week or so (inspired by a great blog - Counting Coconuts).