Today we did our second nature study of the year on Butterflies. Here are some pictures that Sam took on our walk around the yard this morning:
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| Not sure what this one is… Bronze Copper maybe? | Eastern Tailed Blue photography by Sam |
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| White Dotted Prominent? |
Before starting out we looked up butterflies we have seen in the yard before. This site on MO butterflies was very helpful. Of course today we only saw 2 types and neither were what we’d looked up. LOL! Sam chose and ID’d a small blue butterfly, called an Eastern Tailed Blue. We see small flocks of these blue beauties around puddles. This and the small reddish one we found on the damp pavement near our trashcan. Of all places! Jessie found a moth and I think it is a White Dotted Prominent
Here are the kids drawings of their chosen fluttery insects:
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| Jessie’s | Sam’s |
This site on Butterfly anatomy (caterpillars too) had some great information on parts. Sam used it to label his drawing. We talked about the details he omitted and how they would be important if he were trying to ID this for the first time.
Jessie refused to label hers. Sigh. We talked about the parts we could see. She did really well there but… Next week I’m going to have her do a tracing paper overlay of her drawing to label. 
She agreed this would be a good idea. 
This link will take you to a Picassa album of all our nature study photos. I only put a few of each study on the blog. We usually take more than that!
So there ya have it! Next week we’re doing #30 Weeds & Seeds
Those blue butterflies are hard to identify…we saw some on a recent hike and I pulled out the field guide and it had about 15 different blue butterflies with very subtle differences. Amazing!
Great job on the journals and I think you were wise not to make her label the sketch. Plenty of time to do that in the future.
Thank you so much for sharing your study…