2nd Grade Butterfly Lifecycles

Want to amaze and astonish your colleagues and principal? Want to look more rad than you already do? Integrate other academic subjects into your art curriculum!!! Yeah, I know we all pretty much do this already, whether other staff notice or not. It's something I enjoy doing anyway because I really enjoy science and social studies. 


This is a project that Mrs. Heimlich, my student teacher, came up with. She started out talking about the life cycle of a butterfly and reading a book to the students that described each part of the cycle. Student then chose one of four native Ohio butterflies (Monarch, Tiger Swallowtail, Buckeye & Painted Lady) to sketch. They then created the caterpillar and butterfly body out of clay. While the clay was drying and being fired, students created textured paper (Eric Carle style) with the colors of the wings of their chosen butterfly. With the scraps from the butterfly paper, students made a chrysalis by taking a small scrap and wrapping it with wax paper. They then taped the chrysalis to a real stick. Everything was then mounted to a piece of railroad board. My only concern about this project is hanging it in the hallway. The clay pieces are hot glued and tied on with fishing wire, but I don't trust over 600 kids rushing around in the hallways not to send random butterfly parts crashing to the floor and shattering. I prefer to avoid art related tears whenever possible. 


For once, I don't have an electronic version of this lesson plan. Mrs. Heimlich gave me a paper copy to check out before she taught, but I don't have the digital file. It's pretty self explanatory, so I'm sure you super smart art teachers can figure out how to teach it if you want to do so.