Metamorphosis

This week in preschool we have been learning about insects! Teaching the kids that insects have four wings, six legs, two antennae, and three body parts has proven challenging but not impossible! After two weeks of repetition we finally nailed "Head, thorax, abdomen"! Hooray for us!
Our focus the last two days has been caterpillars and butterflies which naturally involves the way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. We try and teach the concept of metamorphosis as simply as possible. Getting them to say metamorphosis is hard enough on its own and we usually get some great variations on the word i.e mess-ah-mort-ee-foos, mental-morph-phoo-sa-sis, meat-n-morphis, metal-mor-fah-sus, or my personal favorite meta-mork-ah-foos.
This is how we present it: Egg-caterpillar-cacoon-butterfly. That's it. Nothing too hard to understand. We even challenge the children to act out the sequence. For the most part they get it. Caterpillar=butterfly. It's that pesky middle step that gives them trouble.
For example a parent shared with me her child's response when asked at home what metamorphosis is:

"First it's an egg, then it's a caterpillar, then it turns into a raccoon then the raccoon becomes a butterfly!"

I'm glad to hear were getting the point across :)