Butterfly Adventures!

by Valerie Oguss, Director of Community Relations & Education

Have you adopted your caterpillar yet? The staff at Kidspace adopted caterpillars early this month and during the past week the office has been a flutter with newly emerged butterflies. My butterfly emerged out of her chrysallis over the weekend! It took exactly three weeks for my caterpillar to metamorphosize and she is now a beautiful Painted Lady Butterfly. I released her into the Kidspace Gardens early this morning. It was such a wonderful experience! This program is such a wonderful way to promote environmental stewardship and educate children about their impact on the balance and survival of the butterfly species.

If you haven't adopted your caterpillar, it isn't too late. Caterpillars will be available at Kidspace's Busy Bee Learning Story through April 16th (while supplies last) for $5. You will receive a caterpillar with food, a care guide and an adoption certificate! To learn more about the experience, check out this cool blog from Kids Off The Couch entitled Metamorphosis.

Butterfly Time!

posted by Susan Cardosi-Albert, Retail ManagerCaterpillar Adoption Days are here (March 17 -April 17)! Check out this fantastic resource for parents and teachers from Carson Dellosa Publishing. It is all based on Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar that ranges from craft ideas to lesson plans, or even interviews with Eric Carle. Can you believe that book is 40 years old?

My Favorite art project is collage, which is perfect for creating your own unique caterpillar or butterfly. A great example of a collage is from a book by Olivia Rosewood called Beatrice is a Butterfly...for Now. Olivia used real photos that her daughter helped take to create her collage.

Check it out in the Busy Bee Learning Store at Kidspace! Here are some instructions, but remember, you can use any materials you like such as old photos, leaves, papers or recycled items.

Here's How to Create Collages:

1. Draw a caterpillar onto tracing paper or other transparent paper.
2. Place your drawing on top of a painted tissue paper and carefully cut the tracing paper and the painted tissue paper with scissors, or with a utility knife (parental assistance recommended)
3. Cut out each section of the caterpillar. First the face, then each body segment.
4. Turn the face over and apply a thin layer of glue or wallpaper paste.
5. Paste the face onto a white illustration board or similar material.
6. Cut out the first green segment of the caterpillar's body.
7. Place tracing paper with head and body segment removed as a guide for pasting down the green segmente.
8. Repeat steps 6 & 7, selecting different shades of green for each segment until the caterpillar body is complete.
9. Carefully cut out the eyes. Moisten the area around the eyes; wait a second, then life and remove the eyes.
10. Cut out yellow, green and brown parts for eyes, nose and feet. You can pick our own colors. Glue them into their places on the face.
11. Use crayons or colored pencils for the final touch!

Grow Window Sprouts

Post by Jinsoo Choi, Early Childhood Education Specialist at Kidspace Children's Museum


Materials
•Plastic zip lock sandwich bag
•Dry lima beans
•Water
•Cotton balls

Directions
1.Gently loosen a cotton ball to flatten and place one lima bean in the center. Repeat with additional lima beans and cotton balls.
2.Add a little water to the lima beans so that the cotton ball “beds” are moist.
3.Put the cotton and lima bean into the plastic zip lock, lima beans facing one side of the bag.
4.Seal the top of the bag.
5.Tape the bag to a window that gets plenty of sunlight, with lima beans facing you so your child can watch them grow.

Your Child Will Learn:
•Fine motor skills
•Early gardening concepts

Related Stories
The Surprise Garden by Zoe Hall
The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss & Crockett Johnson
What’s This? A Seed’s Story by Caroline Mockford

Healthy Diet, Healthy Kids

By Mary Ann Earp, Director of Business Operations at Kidspace Children's Museum

Do you struggle to get your children to eat healthy meals? Here are tips to get picky eaters to try new foods, practical advice in incorporating nutrition into meals and recipes your children will love!

Tips to Get Your Kids to Eat Healthy
• As children develop good eating habits, praise them. Provide occasional non-edible treats as a reward.
• Avoid an eating regimen that is too rigid or rigorous.
• Provide smaller meals and give nutritious nibbles between meals when kids are hungry. That is one way to sneak in fruits and vegetables when the kids are not expecting them and are the most likely to eat them because they are hungry.
• Do not expect immediate results. Changing eating and exercise habits gradually offers a much better chance that your child will make them a way of life.
• Combine different colors and textures at mealtime to make it more interesting and enticing.
• Get your children involved in cooking meals. If they help prepare it, they just may eat it!

The Worst and Best Foods for Kids
Following are ten of the worst childrens' foods, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The Worst:
1. Soda
2. Hamburgers
3. Hot dogs
4. Ice cream
5. Bologna
6. Whole milk
7. American cheese
8. French fries and Tater Tots
9. Pizza
10. Chocolate bars

The Best:
1. Fresh fruits and vegetables (especially carrot sticks, cantaloupe, oranges, watermelon, strawberries)
2. Chicken breast and drumstick without skin or breading
3. Cheerios, Wheaties or other whole-grain, low-sugar cereals
4. Skim or 1-percent milk
5. Extra-lean ground beef or vegetable burgers
6. Low fat hot dogs
7. Non-fat ice cream or frozen yogurt
8. Fat free corn chips or potato chips
9. Seasoned air-popped popcorn
10. Whole wheat crackers or Small World animal crackers