Butterfly Themed Toddler School Lessons
By LAURIN BRAINARD Updated Dec. 15, 2023
Spring is in the air, which means it is the perfect time to share our Toddler School Butterfly Unit with you all! We loved this unit because we were able to relate the butterfly activities to the live butterflies that we saw outside in our backyard and at the park!
Lesson Components
Each of the 5 lessons in this butterfly unit include the following activities:
- literacy/language
- math or science activity
- fine motor activity
- gross motor activity
- art activity
Interested in downloading these butterfly activities that you can print and use right away? Click on the image or button below to check them out in my TpT shop!
How To Start a Week of Toddler Learning
The first thing I do with my son at the beginning of a new unit is color our cover page for our unit notebook. I fold a large sheet of construction paper in half and glue the cover page on with stick glue. It’s a great way to introduce the new unit while getting in some much needed coloring practice. Remember, your toddler is still learning how to color, so going outside the lines is normal for the age.
If you want to download all the plans and printables in this unit, you can find them in our Butterfly Toddler School Pack:
Butterfly Themed Toddler Sensory Bins
Sensory bins are my favorite way to teach new letters and sounds to my toddler. Not only are children given exposure to letters, but they also get to play with tactile materials. When children play with these sensory bin fillers, it helps them to recall the letters when they play with these materials the next time. Plus, sensory bins are filled with opportunities for simultaneous sensory play and academic learning, which is always a win in my book.
In our next sensory bin, we enjoyed building a butterfly and a caterpillar together. First, my son had to move his tiny fingers through the sensory bin filler to find all the butterfly parts. Then, he placed the pieced together the parts to build a butterfly and a caterpillar.
Butterfly Themed Fine Motor Activities
This unit was filled with fine motor activities that are perfect for the spring season!
We worked on the letter B using dot markers. I love adding fine motor activities to letter learning since we can talk about the name and sound of the letter while doing a fun activity. We also used play dough to make the uppercase and lowercase letter B for some extra letter and fine motor practice.
Then, we made caterpillar bracelets by stringing cheerios onto a piece of yarn. Something about creating an animal made this lacing practice extra fun!
If you aren’t familiar with what fine motor skills are, then you can read more about this here: What are Fine Motor Skills?]
Butterfly Themed Art Activities
My son’s favorite activity was making a butterfly mask. He had so much fun squirting liquid glue and sprinkling glitter on his mask. Then, I laminated the mask so that he could wear it around the house without adding a sprinkling of glitter all over our home.
My son LOVES anything with craft sticks right now. Not sure why, but using liquid glue and pasting the stick onto something is all the rage right now. So, we put on a butterfly puppet show! To make our puppets, we decorated our butterfly cutouts and then pasted onto a craft stick.
To set up the activity, grab one of the many cardboard boxes you have around the house. If you have Amazon Prime, then you know what I mean! Carve a hole out of the cardboard box. One person hides behind the box and holds the puppet up into the opening. Have fun taking turns putting on the play!
Butterfly Themed Math and Science Activities
Since this unit is all about butterflies, we took a couple walks in nature to hunt for butterflies. It is so much fun to bring a butterfly net and try to catch a few butterflies. My son was unsuccessful at catching any, but the hunt was half the fun! After our butterfly hunt, we worked on a couple of counting activities.
We used these butterfly counting cards to work on counting objects from 1 to 6. For each butterfly, we placed a counter on the butterfly. It was so much fun watching my little learner work on counting to 6, while pointing to each number and saying the name of the number.
We also worked on counting through this Tabbed Number Book. Each page had a butterfly on the page that matched the number on the tab. We counted all the butterflies and said the name of each number.
Butterfly Themed Gross Motor Activities
No week is complete without some gross motor activities that get us outside! Not only did we take a couple of nature walks, but we also did a butterfly dance, hopped on butterfly cards, and practice flying like a butterfly.
I hope you enjoyed following our Toddler School journey this week! If you want to make it easy to create spring memories with your little ones, then you can download the full Butterfly Toddler School Unit from my shop! It comes with 5 lesson plans and all the printable materials you will need to make teaching your toddler as easy as possible:
If you want to plan out the rest of your month of toddler activities, then here are some other toddler themes that are great for the spring season:
A Year of Toddler Activities All Planned for You!
If you are looking for even more Toddler School fun for you and your little ones, then check out my Complete Toddler School Curriculum Bundle for all the plans and printables you need for an entire year of learning!
Grab this FREE Guide to Plan Your Own Toddler Activities!
If you want to learn more about how to get started planning activities for your little ones, download my FREE guide for everything you need to know about the skill areas we incorporate into toddler school:
This post may contain Amazon affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of my affiliate links, which helps to support The Primary Brain blog. As always, I only recommend products that I love and all ideas shared are my own.
Written on March 4th, 2020 by Laurin Brainard