Ask An ECE

I find science one of the hardest subjects to program for when it comes to childcare. More so now with toddlers, preschoolers and school-age all sharing a room at one time or another. My daughter's daycare provider sent me a link to Science Kit and Boreal Laboratories website and told me about some of their items that might be suitable for daycare.

We purchased butterfly larvae and so began the Butterfly Project. The kit was relatively inexpensive. We purchased the 5 larvae add on kit as we already had a tank to keep them in and with only 15 children, we had no need for a full class set of caterpillars. The kit includes everything you need to raise your larvae into butterflies. The children were so excited to come in every morning as the changes were noticeable from day to day. We took photographs each morning to document the progress as well as tracking changes on the large colour poster provided in the kit. The kids were so interested they requested more information and we readily searched websites to answer all their questions. The process took 21 days from larvae to our release date, providing 3 weeks worth of quality programming. Using a project approach, your entire program can revolve around butterflies with a multitude of craft and circle ideas on the topic as well.

On day 21, we took the tank outside and released the butterflies into the flower garden. It was a beautiful moment and we got a ton of great pictures for the bulletin board. To this day, the children still get excited when they see a butterfly outside and often tell us they saw one of "our" butterflies in their garden at home.

We are looking forward to ordering tadpoles from Boreal in the Spring and starting our Frog Project, culminating in a field trip to release them into a local pond.