I love a good nature project! This week we have been trying to go on walks in the woods a little more, but believe it or not, it’s been rather chilly in the morning, or rainy for that matter. We have been tending our garden and growing our berries (while successfully keeping the birds from stealing them!), but I wanted to expand on gardening and go a little deeper. With all the flowers blooming, there has been a bunch of butterflies so I started seeing what I could find on butterflies and moths to put into a unit for Atlas. There are so many amazing (and free!) resources out there. Since we have all be inside, it seems we have more time to be more intentional about activities we do with our children. You can see how much love and care is going into these home education moments. I know it’s super hard for those who have to come up with a days worth of material all by themselves, and I have also heard how some teachers are going over the top with expectations and shaming parents for not being “instant teachers on demand”. It’s hard to be on both ends of the spectrum, for sure.

We have shifted from a world school mentality, where we used museums and significant locations as a starting off point in our education plan, to a child lead learning mentality. I was doing these very details daily tasks and somewhere in the middle of the third week of “lock down” I noticed we would just trail off into a totally unrelated activity. Like, we were supposed to paint for 30 minutes, but three hours later we are still paining, but also still learning - just in ways I didn’t plan for. So my new “semi-organized” approached is to create units (like in this post) and have it all prepped, but not scheduled. I have done about a dozen like these: moths and butterflies, space, the woods, gardening and seeds, yoga and meditation, money, rainbows, cooking, movie making, etc..

Each unit is a week of exploration and it’s so easy to find prompts and free resources. This wildly reduces anxiety of how each day is going to go. For this moth unit, I started at Smithsonian and went to their “bug info” section and found “Moths”. There were so many great images and quite a large collection of information. Smithsonian also has an extensive section on Butterflies (and a separate section for Monarch!) and many other insects. They made it easy to download images too, so you can print what you want and create your own project out of what you find. This was a good introduction to the week. This is where the discussion started.

This blog has graciously offered a Venn diagram on their page for others learning about moths and butterflies. She also included additional resources and how they explored these creatures.

We ordered caterpillars so we can watch them turn into butterflies and are waiting for them to arrive, so this unit is going to go a bit beyond a week for us. We really love moths and butterflies, so I figure there is no harm in breaking the “rules” we set forth for ourselves to stick to just a week for each unit. Part of why we are adding the other week is because of the time it will take for the caterpillars to turn into butterflies. On this education site, I found a whole page of lifecycle coloring sheets, including moths! This is a good step to show Atlas what to expect when the caterpillars arrive.

My absolute favorite part of this moth and butterfly unit has been crafting these paper moths and using items in our garden to make them even more beautiful. The download was $2.99, and they are absolutely stunning. There are four unique moths. We had to order a glue gun to do this project, but the rest of what we used was easy to find. We gathered sticks, sage, shells, and dried flowers before we began.

We didn’t have any sturdy card stock, so we used a glue stick and craft paper to reenforce the printed wings. I knew Atlas would love playing with them, so I wanted to ensure they were a bit more sturdy than the weight of basic paper.

We loved how these paper moths turned out so much, we turned them into a garland over our pantry items! I know it’s horrible to find moths, but these are friendly, promise.

Atlas loves to draw, so I made sure to find tons of examples of moths and butterflies for him to examine and then draw his own. A free, easy, and beautiful resource is finding really old images! You can also invest in a poster like this one, because it is pretty cool on top of being educational.

As you can see, this is a way more relaxed way to plan a week. We include nature walks, books, youtube videos, and lots of drawings into our unit topics. Some activities last hours and house, and some just minutes. Since we have swapped to this style, Atlas has been initiating education WAY more. Sometimes I just leave a worksheet on the table and don’t say anything, and next thing I know it’s done! He asks about how to spell words, to see videos about government and space, and has been reading more independently. This style certainly won’t work for everyone, but it’s been working for us so I thought I would share. Basically it’s have a clear goal and getting there more organically. If you have done a moth or butterfly unit, we would love to see!