Caterpillar to Butterfly

How do you turn a caterpillar into a butterfly?
By giving it beautiful wings!

All the caterpillars lie vertically on the baseplate. By placing a brick on each side of the caterpillars, they turn into flying butterflies.

Goals

To develop fine motor skills and recognise spatial relationships through imagination and storytelling.
This activity stimulates the tactile exploration of a page, an essential skill for tactile reading.

The adult prepares

1 baseplate
12 random bricks
1 bowl

Attach 4 vertical bricks to the baseplate in random locations, leaving enough space between them to add wings.

The children play

Tell the child to explore the baseplate to find the 4 caterpillars.

Help them turn the caterpillars into butterflies by adding 2 wings from the bowl: one on each side of the caterpillar.

Ask them to imagine the story of these caterpillars. What happened? How did they get to the baseplate? What’s going to happen now?

There, I put four caterpillars.
The caterpillars are here.
You have to put on wings
on each side of the caterpillars,
you have to put two wings.
With the wings that are there.
-I’ve found a caterpillar.
Yes, you found a caterpillar there?
-Yes.
Come on, give it wings.
-Okay.
There, the caterpillar is all alone.
It needs two wings.
Come and get the wings.
One wing,
the caterpillar, and you put another one there.
A caterpillar.
Well done. Another one?
Great!
Well done. No more wings.

Facilitation tips

The child might find several ways to place the wings: that’s great! Creativity must be encouraged.
Use open-ended questions (what where when why how who) to encourage the child to express feelings and emotions.
Change the number of bricks.

Ask the child to mime a butterfly and move their arms like wings. Miming helps chidren understand what wings are and how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. It gives them a lasting mental image.

I’m going to teach you what a butterfly does.
So you see, there.
-Yes. This is your body. Okay?
Yes. And this is my back.
A butterfly…
Arms are like this.
So go on, hold them like this.
And now you shake them like this.
And that’s it! The birth of a little butterfly.
That’s the caterpillar. And the butterfly, what’s it like?
It’s like this. -It has wings that grow.
And the caterpillar?
Hop!
The butterfly?
Great!