A Butterfly is Patient

We’ve been looking for more nonfiction books and were very happy to find A Butterfly is Patient, written by Dianna Hutts Aston and illustrated by Sylvia Long.  This beautifully illustrated book begins each page with “A butterfly is…” and completes the sentence with vivid adjectives (protective, thirsty, patient, etc.).  Taking a picture walk (or several picture walks because there is so much to discover) will help the reader learn more about butterflies.

The illustrations are phenomenal in helping the reader visualize the meanings.  Maps and timelines also help the reader understand this nonfiction text.  An added bonus for us was seeing the inside front and back covers.  The front inside cover has detailed illustrations of caterpillars with their names while the back inside cover displays the butterflies with their names. 

This is a terrific book to begin a butterfly study and/or introduce young readers to nonfiction texts.  We highly recommend this book as a gift to your children!

Question Collection:

*Which pages taught you most about butterflies?

*Which illustration do you like the best?

*How many of these butterflies have you seen?

*How would you describe a butterfly?

Butterflies of the World Fandex

Our family loves learning more about nature.  Books about butterflies, planting butterfly bushes, and outside observation have raised many questions about the types of butterflies we see.  Although we had several nature guides, we didn’t have any about butterflies.  We were very excited when we found the Butterflies of the World Fandex (published by Workman Publishing). 

This butterfly index is easy to use while it also invites you to learn more about butterflies.  The cards are attached at the bottom and fan out to show beautifully colored butterflies with information about them on the front and back of the card. The common name and scientific name are given for each butterfly.  Accompanying illustrations on each card vary with each butterfly displaying examples of eggs, pupa, chrysalis, caterpillars, or close-ups.  Some cards have insets on the back that give more narrative information.  The backs of the cards also contain field notes that tell the family, species, describer, time of flight, habitat, range, and wingspan.

This fandex has given us hours of learning and fun!  Butterflies have been identified, lists have been made, and drawings have been accomplished since we started using this fandex.  If you want to learn more about butterflies, this is a great source!

Butterfly Tree

As you and your children explore nature, the book, Butterfly Tree, can add to your appreciation of natural beauty and wonder of monarch butterflies. Through an unfolding story about a little girl, her dog Fudge, and her mom, author Sandra Markle explains how the little girl’s imagination helps them to find the butterfly tree.  This book, beautifully illustrated by Leslie Wu, is a great example of using picture walks to predict what the little girl will see.  Re-reading this book will help the reader/listener discover new items in the illustrations each time.  Also included at the conclusion is a helpful page with facts about monarch butterflies.  We enjoyed this book of fiction combined with nonfiction to help us learn more about monarch butterflies.

Question Collection:

*How many monarch butterflies do you think were on the tree?

*Have you ever had a butterfly land on you?

*What kind of memory did the little girl and her mom make?

Butterfly Treasure Box

Are you looking for some ideas for young girls for birthday gifts or need some early Christmas shopping?  Usually crafts in our home are the “home-made” variety.  We keep lots of construction paper, ribbon, foam, glitter, pipe cleaners, glue sticks, etc. in baskets to encourage imagination.  And, our family has had lots of fun, creative play with those items.  However, our daughter received the Melissa and Doug Butterfly Treasure Box that was a huge hit!  It was a fun item to go along with our butterfly books.

This is a well constructed, easy to understand kit that makes a very pretty butterfly shaped box that can hold various items.  I think the simplicity of ease resulting in a project that can be used again and again held a lot of appeal.  We’ve decided that we’ll be giving some of these away as gifts this year too!