Can We Build A Butterfly House?

Introduction

You were sent on an insect hunt and you just caught sight of a beautiful butterfly. 

Because you are so impressed and interested with this butterfly you want to find out more about it. 

Ms. LeMauk came up with the idea for the class to create a butterfly house. In order to have this house everyone needs to understand how butterflies live and how they grow.

 

It is up to you to determine if as a class we are able to create a butterfly house. You need to become an explorer and help the butterflies survive in their new home. 

Can you research all about butterflies so we can have our very own butterfly house? 

Task

Butterflies play a role in how ecosystems work and how they run properly. Butterflies play a special part in communities and it is up to you to research all about them.  

By doing this activity you look be looking up how butterflies live and more importantly how they grow to become the beautiful butterflies that they are. Each person within your small group will be given a specific job that they need to complete. The different job titles include, what are the parts of the butterfly called, what do the butterflies eat, what kind of environment do they need to live in, what stages of life do they go through in order to become a butterfly. The big question that you need to ask yourself is, "how can I help Ms. LeMauk create a butterfly house that will help support each butterfly to grow and become beautiful?" You are to take notes of the different stages and write down notes for each stage.

              

After you have done the research you will create your own butterfly in class to take home! 

Process

One thing that you should pay attention to is a butterfly that looks the most interesting to you. Maybe Ms. LeMauk will allow you to have that butterfly in our very own butterfly house.

Step 1: Look at the different websites listed below. You are to look through the websites and write down notes for each stage of life for a butterfly. Be sure to write down as much as you can to make sure you are an expert. This includes looking up the type of environment that they need to live in in order to survive as well. 

http://www.turtlediary.com/kindergarten-games/science-games/butterfly-l…;

http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/monarch_butterfly.htm 

http://www.flashclassroom.com/docs/flash/79_butterfly_emma.swf 

http://kids.sandiegozoo.org/animals/insects/butterfly 

Step 2: After you have researched the life cycle of a butterfly and the environement in which they live, you are able to create your very own butterfly. Below are a list of materials for you to use. Make sure to label the different parts of the butterfly.

Activity:

-Toilet paper tube

-Ice cream popsicle stick 

-Paper

-6" piece of pipecleaner 

-Crayons, markers or colored pencils

-Scissors and glue 

1) Cut out a butterfly from a piece of paper and color it whatever color you would like. Make sure that both wings look alike and make it as colorful as you would like. Cut a small hole at the top of the butterflies head. 

2) Color the toilet paper tube to look like a chrysalis.

3) Take the pipe cleaner and fold it to look like a "v". Put on end through the hole that you just made at the top of the butterflies head and make it look like an antenna. Butterflies "feelers" are very important!

4) Glue the butterfly to one end of the popsicle stick.

5) Curl the butterflies wings and slide it into the chrysalis.  

Here is an example of one for you!

 

Evaluation

You will be graded on the notes that you took pertaining to the specific job that you have. You must have at least 10 facts. Please use as much detail as you possibly can. (50 points)

You will be graded on the beautiful butterfly that you have created. Are the wings the same size? Are the colors the same? Did you include all of the necessary parts of the butterfly? Are all of the parts of the butterfly labeled? (25 points)

You will be graded on your participation. This includes the research you did and also the amount of effort you put into your very own butterfly. (10 points) 

You will be graded on your input and ideas regarding the butterfly house for our classroom. There should be a one page paper for this. (15 points)

Conclusion

What an adventure! We started off as just a class interested in butterflies and we turned ourselves into butterfly experts. We researched the different stages of a butterflies life and we examined the environment in which they live. After researching we all created our very own butterflies to take home with us. Now that we have all of the information that we need we can start brainstorming and creating our very own butterfly house in the classroom! 

      

Credits
Teacher Page

After each student has done their own research they will come together as a group and brainstorm ideas how their butterfly house will look and they will need to talk about why they are choosing what they are. Each student should put in at least two ideas and as a group there will create a list.

Below are two standards by which the teacher is going to be following.  

3-5-ETS1-2.Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem