Like most of Kindergarten, I'm keeping my Summer approach very light and fun. This doesn't mean that learning doesn't take place. I have been picking themes that I thought would be fun for Summer and unlike my themes that I had them do during the school year my Summer themes have an open end approach, meaning we start them when an opportunity arises and we continue for as long or short a time as we like or the kids are still interested... or I run out of fun ideas and projects . The first theme we covered was/ is butterflies. Now this is something that Kayiah knew a lot about already the whole metamorphasis thing, but like I said my goal for Summer is fun learning I'm not trying to put too much pressure on the girls for the Summer.
After reading A Place for Butterflies, I asked Kayiah to choose a species that she would like to replicate. Well ok I kinda helped her choose according to the paper supply I had and also what I thought might be do-able for a 6 yr old. So Eastern Tiger Swallowtail it was. I thought she did pretty good and I only had to help her a little.
The girls loved doing this project and I lvoed the way they turned out, definitely a "saver" project. A simple lesson in symmetry, free painting and creativity.
Oh and this was a fun one too. Got this off of make learning fun website. Used pear cuscuos for the eggs( they said rice) and rotini pasta for the caterpillar they say to use shell pata for the chrysilis and bowtie for the butterfly but I didn't have those so we used cotton ( going more for the moth type cacoon) and stickers for the butterflies and that made the girls really happy. Since we are going to the beach next week at least for a day I think I will start a unit on Sea Life and tidal habitats, Kayiah has already expressed interest in that so we may study that for several weeks.
