Whole Child Development
Spiders and insects are often lumped together, but there are some significant differences that even young children can begin to recognize. Noting the difference between insects and spiders isn’t just important for discerning between the two “in the wild”, but the act of comparing and classifying is perfect for practicing logic, reasoning, and science skills.
If you ask a group of preschoolers to name their favorite insect or bug, chances are you’ll get quite a few votes for the butterfly. They’re beautiful, gentle bugs, and their metamorphosis is simply spectacular. If you have little ones interested in the butterfly life cycle, particularly if you are using the butterfly habitat, you might want to try this activity!
When it comes to exploring bugs, you just can’t really beat bug collecting as an activity! Getting bugs into an enclosure -whether it’s the time-honored classic jar with air-holes in the lid, or something like this– allows children to look closely at the bugs to examine their characteristics. Having a barrier not only keeps the bug in one place, but it often makes little ones feel a bit less skittish.
Eric Carle’s The Very Busy Spider will always be one of my favorites because it was one of the first books I regularly read to my first son. It’s a simple story of a spider slowly building a perfect web as the barnyard animals come one by one to invite her to play. By the end of the story, the web is finished, the pesky fly has been caught, and the spider is ready for a good night’s sleep. The patterned text is great for reading with young children – invite them to join in with you!
Here’s a quick sensory table idea for your unit on plants, seeds, flowers, or gardens. Fill your sensory bin with soil – either right out of the bag, or right out of the ground. Add some pansy pony packs, hand tools, magnifiers, a few small containers with water, gloves, and even worms if you’re feeling extra organic! Let the children plant the flowers in the bin, examining the roots as they go. If they want to pull the flowers apart, examining their parts, that’s OK too!
When doing a study of seeds, plants, flowers, and gardens with children, the obvious, absolutely best activity is actually growing something from a seed! The transformation is magical and empowering to those little ones, and the applied activity really reinforces all they’ve learned about the needs of plants, and how they grow. Here are a few of my favorite planting activities!
I just wanted to share some photos from the experiment we did after reading The Empty Pot (details on the experiment here). I used pea seeds since they’re nice and large…..and because I already had them on hand, seeing as how I’m way behind on actually getting them in the ground. Here’s the difference between the two samples after about a week’s time.
When exploring seeds, plants, and gardens, it’s great to mix in some seeds with this classic finger-paint recipe. Here, I used culinary seeds, since I had them on hand. I used fennel seed in the green, sesame seed in the yellow, and poppy seed in the blue. (As a side note, it’s fun to use two primary colors and the secondary color they create as a trio of paints for an activity. The mixing and blending is exciting!)
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