busy wings

Last night we read the Enki 1st Grade Nature Story, "Busy Wings", which follows Little Monarch on her migration south to the mountains of Mexico, and back north again to lay her eggs after over-wintering with thousands of her brothers and sisters. Her children go on to produce grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who then migrate south again the next fall.

This morning, we recalled the story, then did some beeswax modeling. Both during the recalling and the artistic work, the kids were still obviously focused on the life cycle rather than the migration cycle.

The first photo is what I sculpted.

Here's J's sculptures -- there's a yellow egg on a green leaf, a green caterpillar (with black eyes) eating the leaf, and a chrysalis hanging from the leaf. And of course the adult monarch butterfly flying away. He spend quite a bit of time playing out the entire life cycle with his sculpted pieces after he made them.


I found it fascinating that Zoo Boy sculpted almost exactly the same things as J, even though he never looked to see what J was working on. His butterfly is on the left, then a yellow chrysalis (a little hard to see on the yellow background), then a green caterpillar eating a green leaf, then a black egg on a green leaf.

I have no idea what The Map Man was thinking -- he came in halfway through our modeling session and thought we were sculpting caterpillars, I guess.

The boys (and The Man!) seemed to enjoy working with the beeswax. Me, not so much. I'm not patient enough to do so much pausing to warm the wax before manipulating it -- I prefer the instant-gratification of playdoh. But this certainly smells MUCH better!

Given the kids' focus on the life cycle, I brought out my wax window crayons while the kids were finishing up their sculpture, and drew an Adult Monarch on our sliding glass door, over a field of flowers, heading towards some mountains. Zoo Boy looked up from his work, and suggested a sun, and I added a cloud as well. Then, across the middle of the scene, I wrote "good luck, Little Monarch!" The kids were thrilled, and commented that she was on her way south. (I tried getting a picture, but lighting at a glass door being what it is, you can't see the drawing very well in the picture, though it shows up just fine in real life.)

I had planned on wrapping up our butterfly study in a neat little package by taking the kids to a Monarch tagging program tomorrow afternoon. But it seems likely that it will be canceled due to the weather (rainy and nasty here, apparently for days to come!). Today there were downpours, and no migrating butterflies to be found, so we found alternate adventures to keep us occupied this afternoon. (Details coming soon!)