There are many activities in the Montessori classroom that teach the children about different life cycles of animals and plants. These activities are designed to train your child’s faculties of observation, sequencing, and change.
The children start to notice an abundance of change during the passage of time between Spring and Summer seasons. As the weather warms, tree buds start to transform into leaves, flowers blossom and bloom, and insects crawl and fly around.
This year, the children witnessed the life cycle of a butterfly happen in real time. They learned about the metamorphosis through terminology (egg, larva, chrysalis, and butterfly) as each stage progressed through days and weeks.
We created an art display depicting the life cycle of a butterfly.
We started with a child who learned the names of leaves through the botany cabinet; she traced, painted and cut out the leaves. We then added crumpled tissue paper to resemble eggs the butterfly laid. We glued pompoms to popsicle sticks to depict larva and painted egg cartons for plump caterpillars. For the chrysalis, we used pastels to colour coffee filters and rolled them stuffed with fabric. For the butterflies, we coloured paper with marker, resembling wings, and diffused the colours with water. We used pegs for the body of the butterflies. The children really enjoyed the whole experience! Please enjoy the video collage of our process.
