Whole Body Butterfly Life Cycle Gross Motor Imagination Play

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Strawberry simply loves butterflies right now! As we prepared a report about butterflies for our recent project fair, we took the chance to act out the parts of the butterfly life cycle. This whole body gross motor play is just how she learns! I know she’ll not forget the details we discussed: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly with antennae and proboscis. These are now ingrained in her memory. Plus, it was tons of fun to act out!

What You Need for the Gross Motor Butterfly Life Cycle

Here is what we used to act out the butterfly life cycle.

laundry basket (egg)
green towel (a leaf to eat)
blanket (chrysalis)
headband and two pipe cleaners (antennae)
fairy wings (or otherwise)
party blower (proboscis)
construction paper flower

The party blower is super important as this is the most fun part of being a butterfly…you get to flit around and eat nectar! So, it would help to make some pretend flowers for the butterflies to eat.

Acting Out the Butterfly Life Cycle

As we acted out the butterfly life cycle over and over again, even my little baby could not hesitate to get in the fun. She did not want to come out of her egg. She wanted to stay all cozy in there.

Once Strawberry was hatched, however, she was always eager to turn around and eat her egg. We learned that the caterpillars eat their eggs before they even start looking for leaves. Our green blanket was the surface where the egg was, so she ate that too, once the egg/laundry basket was out of the way!

Then it was time for Strawberry to go into her chrysalis. She loved that I picked her all the way up to completely wrap her in the blanket. She tried to put her wings, antennae (headband) and proboscis (party blower) on while under there. It’s not so easy.

Then it was time to flit over to the flower. Strawberry loved this fact that we learned: butterflies taste a flower with their feet to see if they will like it!

And then, of course, it was time to use the party blower to suck up the nectar. I love how this shot was somewhat in motion.

We acted out the butterfly life cycle at least three full times. the shots are somewhat blurry because, well, I can’t get my five year old to go slowly and sit still! This was perfect for learning about the butterfly life cycle. She’ll never forget it!