Our topic this half term is Minibeasts! A ‘minibeast’ is any animal that is smaller than a mouse, that does not have a spine or back bone! So that includes insects, spiders, beetles, snails, worms, centipedes… the list goes on.
We are going to be learning about lots of different minibeasts and reading lots of lovely stories and non fiction books to support our learning.
This week we are focusing on caterpillars and butterflies!
Today we talked about what the class already knew about these Minibeasts, and lots of children already knew that caterpillars grow into butterflies!
We talked about the life cycle of a caterpillar, how they start as an egg, then a caterpillar, then a cocoon of chrysalis, and then a beautiful buttery. This is called a cycle because it goes round and round, as butterflies lay new eggs and the cycle continues. I showed Nursery some pictures of beautiful butterflies, and shared that their wings have the same amazing patterns on both wings, this means they are symmetrical.
We then learnt two different songs about caterpillars turning into butterflies and practiced the actions of these songs to help our learning! We will continue to learn and practice these songs. Finally after a great carpet time, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar! This was our book of the week and Nursery loved reading it and counting how much food he eats each day as he grows.
We had two activities to support Nursery’s learning of caterpillars and butterflies. For caterpillars, Nursery had 10 caterpillars numbered 1 – 10. For each caterpillar, Nursery had to paint a dot to show the correct amount for each caterpillar. This used their fine motor skills to finger paint and press on the correct caterpillar, as well as supporting their number recognition and 1:1 correspondence. For the butterflies, Nursery painted one side of the wings, and then completed a printing activity by pressing the wings together and making a symmetrical pattern!
