metamorphosis Archives - Growing In Grace

Study of a Bug’s Life: Insect Life Stages

August 22, 2012Tracy

The next stop on our Week of Bugs tour was a study of the insect life stages. I read in God’s Design for Life: World of Animals book about complete and incomplete metamorphosis and the different stages of the process. While I was reading, we illustrated the whole process with our very cool plastic insect life stages.

As we read about eggs, I had the kids find all of the eggs from each of the different insect sets. We had a butterfly egg, ant eggs, beetle eggs, praying mantis soft and hard egg cases, and ladybug eggs.

We looked at the praying mantis nymphs and talked about the three stages of incomplete metamorphosis.

When we read about larvae, the kids found all of the plastic insect larvae and lined them up for me. Then, we talked about pupae and the chrysalis.

Last, I had the kids each choose two insects and take me through the complete (or incomplete) metamorphosis. Once again, the plastic insects made teaching and drilling so much fun!

study of insect life stages — Metamorphosis of a Darkling Beetle

study of butterfly life stages — Metamorphosis of a Painted Lady Butterfly

We wrapped up the week with a look at arachnids (spiders and scorpions) and, on the last day, a video about the monarch butterfly.

It was absolutely as much fun as I had hoped it would be. And really, though I had originally planned for our lessons to be once a week for a month, I think it turned out even better to have done it all in one week. Now to go catch some arthropods!

The life of an amphibian

July 25, 2012Tracy

We’ve made it to amphibians in our summer study of animals and their classifications. Because we spent quite a bit of time last summer on frogs and toads, I hadn’t intended to spend a lot of time on it this summer. But it’s always fun to study tadpoles and polliwogs.

So I picked up a book at our library, printed off some notebooking pages, and sat down with some cool science goodies that my mom sent us a few weeks ago.

First, I read the book to them while they held up the piece that matched the story. Then, I let them look through the book and play with each piece of the frog’s life cycle.

amphibian life cycle lesson for preK and K5

After the kids had touched, held, and played with the pieces for awhile, I pulled out our notebooking page. They studied each stage and then drew it in the boxes of their notebooking sheet. Most of the “art” was pretty easy.

Egg: draw a circle and color a dot in the center; for a spawn, draw several eggs with sides touching.

Tadpole: draw a circle; draw a tale; add a face

With back legs: draw a circle and tale; add back legs and a face

Front and back legs: draw a circle and tale; add back legs, front legs, and a face

Frog: (this is where it got more difficult)

Both of them bawked when I suggested drawing a frog. So we got out our I Can Draw Animals book, turned to the frog page, and drew two very cute frogs!

Notebooking for younger children

But even after the lesson was over, it wasn’t really over. Middlest had all sorts of imaginary adventures for the little frog family; and every time I get them put away, they show up somewhere else.