Metamorphosis

I really wanted to get this post up before Spring turned to the long summer days.
Because it's a project that has to do with transformation. The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly still fascinates me and seems miraculous. Even the word metamorphosis is a wonderful combination of miraculous and scientific. Go to the Butterfly Pavilion down at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum to see each stage of this metamorphosis from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis to the butterfly and around to the egg again.
In our Parent/child classes we talked about this transformation and created caterpillars from mismatched socks. ( I love to up cycle ).

We talked about how hungry caterpillars are and how they eat and eat and eat as the kids stuffed their socks with stuffing that I used from worn out pillows, pushing the stuffing all the way to the bottom with their little hands. You can also get stuffing from any fabric store. 

After tying the end of the sock the kids glued on buttons and fabric scraps.

The final touch was to wrap the caterpillars with yarn. This keeps all that fabric and the buttons on the creature until it dries as well as mimics the cocoon.

Some kids made loooong caterpillars and

some made small caterpillars. Either way they are soft and snuggly.

The following week we made butterfly wings from watercolor paper an liquid watercolors. I precut the watercolor paper in the shape of butterfly wings. Instead of using just paint brushes we used little droppers. The kids have such delight when squeezing the end of the dropper to watch the paint spread all over the paper. It's a great fine motor skill lesson for the kids learning they need to squeeze the dropper before they put it in the ink and then let go for the paint to suck up into the dropper. 

 After the paintings dried and it took a while, some of them were very wet from all the paint play,  I glued on a rectangle of cardboard.

I  punched holes in the 4 corners and placed wire or you could use string so that the kids could wear the wings like a back pack, becoming the butterflies themselves. 

Happy Transformation!!!!