Migrating butterflies

No, not in Germany in winter! Piggybacking off of our butterfly questions about eyes and ears, etc., I pulled out yet another of our butterfly books-this one on monarch butterfly migration in North America. I am pretty sure than 75% of our science books have some sort of butterfly theme! National Geographic has their great new series, Great Migrations, on t.v. (well, probably some places, but not on AFN!), and we ordered a Scholastic pack that included books for elephants and whales.

I printed out a map of North America in anticipation of a super-great and enriching map lesson, which would naturally include labeling the North American countries. JillyBoo decided that coloring the map-without migration labels-would be best. I was able to convince her to label Alaska, "AK,"at which time she unceremoniously turned the map over to make her own map. (Prominently displayed in technicolor on the right)

This move was likely inspired by dad, who is trying to plan a trip to Malta. He used a wall map to show JillyBoo the relative locations of Malta and our home in Central Europe. Her new map included "all of the places we've lived," including a little 'x' in a circle, marking each place that we have lived. So, where have we lived? Alaska, America (Umericu-phonetic spelling) and our country in Europe. She plans to color on the map more, and I used her sort of trance-like coloring time as an opportunity to read to her from the Great Migrations book. I also assigned her homework-written on a Post-It, naturally: Draw a picture of a butterfly migrating. So that will be her learning log entry for tomorrow.

Prior to butterfly studies, I tried to trick JillyBoo into reading a book from a great set of science readers that I found, the PebblePlus, "Life in a..." biome series. We now own Life in a: Forest, Desert, Pond and Ocean. These books are terrific for early readers who have mastered many single and simple-double letter phonemes. They are highly repetitious with more difficult words, and today she became acquainted with area, forest, animals and warm as new words. In order to trick her in to reading, I played a game that she loves but we loathe: Mountain lions! Usually this game involves us crawling around on our nearly-40-year-old knees whilst roaring and pawing at stuff aimlessly. Instead, I played an older child mountain lion who helped baby mountain lion with her reading. I encouraged her to read about 4 pages, and then we shelved the book for later. More mountain lions and butterflies to follow, I'm sure.