(bouncy music) - Oh, hello, little learners, hello.

I was just reading about ladybugs and how they lay their sticky eggs on leaves.

Because you'll remember, this week we're learning all about insects.

It's so fun to study the world around us, isn't it?

Now, have you ever seen an insect?

I saw an insect this morning.

I'm gonna see if you can guess what insect I saw.

I was walking in my garden and I came across a beautiful flower and, of course, I had to stop and smell the flower, so I put my nose right up to it, (sniffs) and then I heard a sound.

(mimics a buzz) And then I quickly saw what it was.

It had a pattern of yellow, black, yellow, black, and I saw stingers, so I went (cries) and I ran away.

What insect did I see?

That's right, it was a bee.

Oh, I'm a little bit scared of bees, but this week we're gonna learn that they're so helpful to our environment, so I hope that you stick around.

Now, I wanna call out a bee or another insect to come to the studio with us, and I do that by singing a song, of course.

And our song this week is about a little ladybug, and my favorite part at the end is when it crawls all over.

So are you ready to sing?

Here we go.

♪ I have a little ladybug ♪ ♪ Ladybug, ladybug ♪ ♪ I have a little ladybug ♪ ♪ It's wings are black and red ♪ Next we're gonna see the ladybug.

So get your binoculars out.

Here we go.

♪ See the little ladybug ♪ ♪ Ladybug, ladybug ♪ ♪ See the little ladybug ♪ ♪ It's flying here and there ♪ Ooh, they fly quickly, don't they?

Last it's gonna land on the ground and then it's gonna be my favorite part.

Yay.

♪ Now it's landing on the ground ♪ ♪ On the ground, on the ground ♪ ♪ Now it's landing on the ground ♪ ♪ And crawling everywhere ♪ Jumping on your shoulders, it's over here.

Well, there it goes, crawling, crawling, and it tickles.

(Mrs Lara laughs) And I've also been teaching you Spanish.

Remember the word we've been learning is (speaking in Spanish) which means ladybug in Spanish.

And I have a little song to share with you too in Spanish.

Here we go.

(sings in Spanish) Vuela means fly.

(sings in Spanish) That means roll.

(sings in Spanish) That means jump.

(sings in Spanish) That means they're walking slowly.

(sings in Spanish) Shh, (snoring) shh, (snoring) Shh, they're asleep.

(sighs) Did that call any insects to us?

What's that?

There's an insect next to me?

It has black and yellow and a stinger?

Is it a bee.

Oh no, here it is.

(mimics a bee buzzing) I knew our song would call.

It's on my shoulder.

Try not to panic, Miss Lara.

Try not to panic.

There it is.

Maybe I'll just put the bee down here.

(sighs) That was a close call.

Okay, go to your garden.

I have a book to share with you about insects, but first, we have to review our words.

So let's look behind the door before we get to our text today.

(fanfare) There are three words that we're going to need to learn before we read our story.

The first word is special letter M and the word is molt.

Can you say that word?

Molt.

That's right.

It means to shed off your skin and grow a new covering.

Do humans molt?

No, but the insect in our story does.

It sheds its skin and gets a new covering.

Pretty cool, right?

Number two is chrysalis.

Special letter C for chrysalis.

It's the hard case that protects a butterfly pupa.

And we'll learn what a pupa is in just a moment.

The last word is special letter M for milkweed.

It's a plant with milky juice and pointed pods.

Now milkweed is very special to the insect that we're going to introduce today.

So let me grab our story.

Do you see what insect it is?

It's special letter B.

/b/ Butterfly.

I love butterflies because they're so colorful.

Look at their beautiful wings.

They have patterns all over their wings.

Now we're gonna learn about the butterfly life cycle, which means how it goes from a tiny little egg into a full adult butterfly.

So let's see what our book says.

Ooh, and this book is special because it has a table of contents that tells us what's in the book.

So it has the title and the page number.

So if I just wanted to go and read a certain section, I could.

Here it goes.

"Life in an egg.

A female monarch butterfly floats in the air.

She's looking for a special plant.

At last she finds a milkweed plant and lays her eggs."

So there's the female adult butterfly.

Look how beautiful she is and delicate.

I wish one would let me get close enough to touch its wings, but it found milkweed.

And what's special about milkweed?

It's that's the only plant where a butterfly lays its eggs.

"Caterpillars hatch from the eggs in about a week.

These little critters eat their way out of the egg using their strong jaws."

So look, here's a caterpillar, and you can't really see their strong jaws, but look, this is what they, they're shedding their skin here, coming from an egg and they start right away munching leave.

(mimics caterpillar chewing on leaves) Delicious.

"Hungry caterpillars."

Ooh, we read a book about hungry caterpillars.

"Hungry caterpillars eat milkweed leaves.

They eat until their skin gets, Ugh, too tight, and then (mimics a pop) They molt or shed their old skins."

Remember, molt was one of our words.

It means to shed your skin and grow a new covering.

"Underneath is a new, larger skin."

Now, what do you think if humans could do that?

What if we could molt and we shed our skin and grow into different skin or coverings?

Do you think that would be a good thing or a bad thing?

Look at this caterpillar.

It is very large and has lots of patterns.

"A caterpillar sheds its skin four or five times."

What?

That's a lot of times.

They're very busy.

That means it's eating and eating and growing out of its skin, and then growing new skin.

"The caterpillar hangs upside down from a leaf.

It sheds its skin one more time.

The new layer is called a pupa or a chrysalis."

(gasps) Look at this.

Now this is much larger.

They went right in to take picture, but if you ever get to see a pupa up close, they're quite small, and it's really fun to watch a butterfly start coming out of the pupa or chrysalis, 'cause it moves around and then it cracks through.

Let's see.

"Inside a pupa.

The pupa hardens as it dries and inside the pupa, caterpillar's body changes.

After about two weeks, the pupa cracks open."

Now you'll remember, it was large and green, and then all of a sudden, you can start to see the butterfly's wings inside, and then it's gonna start to move around and start to move around, and out is gonna come a butterfly.

There it is.

"A butterfly pulls itself out of the pupa.

Its body is wet and folded.

Its wings slowly open and dry in the sun."

So when a butterfly first comes out, can it fly right away if its wings are wet?

What do you think?

"Life as a butterfly.

All summer, the monarch flies from flower to flower.

It unrolls its long tongue to eat.

The monarch sucks nectar from the flowers.

Yum."

So you can see there's the beautiful butterfly wings.

And if you look really, really close, you can see its long tongue reaching into the flower and getting all that nectar (mimics butterfly sucking nectar) like a straw.

Delicious.

"Days get shorter, the weather gets cooler.

Monarch butterflies know it's time for the long flight South.

They rest in trees along the way."

And lots of grownups pay lots of money to see the butterflies migrate or go to the South.

"In spring, the sun warms the butterflies.

Most fly North, butterflies mate and the females lay eggs, caterpillars hatch and molt, and from a pupa comes a beautiful butterfly."

And look, this is what we're going to review in just a minute.

It's the life cycle of a butterfly.

So I hope that you enjoyed this book about butterfly's life cycle.

We're gonna take a moment and just review what we've learned before we go over to the project place and actually make a butterfly of our own.

So here is the butterfly life cycle.

Do you remember what it starts with?

Can you show me with your hands?

Butterfly start with a tiny little egg.

That's right.

And do you remember the plant where they lay their eggs?

It's milkweed.

Just think of a cow.

(mimics a cow mooing) Milkweed.

That's where they lay their eggs and here they are.

And it's hard to believe something so small can create such a beautiful thing like a butterfly, but first, tiny little eggs.

And then what happens?

Then those eggs become a caterpillar, that's right.

And a caterpillar moves around and eats, and munches with its strong jaws, and then it sheds its skin.

Can you shed your skin at home?

You can pretend.

Shed your skin just like a caterpillar does.

It does it five to six times in its life cycle.

Wow.

And then it becomes a pupa.

Oh, and it goes inside of a chrysalis.

Look here's my chrysalis hanging from the branch.

It's a hard outer shell.

And then the butterfly's in there for a while and it's growing its wings, and it's growing its antenna, and it's growing its long tongue until it becomes a beautiful adult butterfly.

Look at this, all these patterns.

And then guess what happens?

Does the cycle start all over again?

Yes, that's what a cycle does.

♪ A cycle repeats over and over ♪ ♪ A cycle repeats over and over ♪ So I hope that you learned a little bit about the butterfly life cycle.

Right now we're gonna move over to the project place because we're gonna make our own butterfly with some paints.

All right, let's go over here.

For this activity, you are going to need some paper.

Now I have some strong hard stuff because where I am I really want you to be able to see it and for it to dry kind of quicker.

So card stock is better for that.

It doesn't absorb the paint as much and get all wrinkly.

But if you don't have card stock, just use whatever paper you have at home.

And then I got so excited because I'm using tons of painting tools.

You might not have these at home.

You can always use my favorite painting tools which are your fingers.

Then I have lots of paint brushes.

I have big ones and small ones, and even tinier tinier ones.

And then I have this tool which creates waves in the paint.

And then I have a stamper.

And then this tool, which kind of lets you roll through the paint.

So hopefully I get to use them all today.

You'll need some scissors, a marker, and then two paper plates and some paint of your choice.

So I use the paper plates to mix my paints.

So right here, you'll see I have blue, black, white, red, and yellow.

You can use any colors you'd like for your butterfly, but I use these colors because you can mix them to make other colors.

They're the primary colors.

And then you can lighten the paint and darken it, whatever it is that you'd like.

Okay, so our first step is we're going to take our paper and we're actually gonna fold it in half, when half means you're gonna create two parts that are the same.

So there you go.

Folding it in half, I'll show you in just a minute.

Now, sometimes I like to take the end of a paint brush and go back and forth like this.

So there it is.

Well, it almost looks like a book.

And then you're going to draw your butterfly shape.

So this is what it's looking like.

I have to think about what my butterfly is going to look like.

Hmm.

And I have a little book here that's gonna help me.

So we're just making one side and I want you to think.

Trace with your finger.

It has one wing like this and another wing like this and it's attached to a body.

So when I'm making my shape, I have to think of about that.

Hmm.

Okay, here we go.

I'm gonna make the body.

And then I'm gonna make one wing kind of larger.

So that's how it was in the picture.

And then I'm gonna do one wing kind of smaller like this.

And then in the body, what do you think?

Does that look like a butterfly?

Okay, let me do it again in case you're following along at home.

I made one curve for the body, one larger wing like this, and then one smaller wing, and ended it with a little body piece down here.

And that is half of my butterfly.

So our next step is to grab some scissors and you're gonna hold both pieces of the paper like this and you're gonna cut around the line that you just made.

So let's cut, let's see.

Cut around the curves.

And you are going to cut around the wing.

Now there's a place that allows you to go see butterflies in San Francisco, and you actually get to get in there and they let you touch the butterflies which is really cool, and some might even land on you, but it's not around all the time.

I wish they had a place like that here where I live.

You have to go look for butterflies, and then they're very shy.

They don't like to be touched or bothered.

I don't blame them.

All right.

There we go.

And there is our butterfly.

Now when you open it up, you should have kind of a butterfly shape like this and I'll do it on this side so you can see.

Look at that.

Now, as we know, butterflies are not white, they're super colorful.

So we're gonna do what's called smash art.

Yes.

We're gonna paint only one side of our butterfly.

Now what I used to like to do in the classroom because painting just one side is really hard.

You're gonna wanna paint all of them, is I usually put a little piece of paper on one half of it so that children remember just paint one side and then we're gonna smash it down.

Really roll on it.

It's gonna create a beautiful pattern.

So this is where I get to use my paints.

Here we go.

I'm gonna mix right here in my little palette.

I'm gonna mix some red and I'm gonna grab a little bit of yellow, and I'm gonna put it right here.

What color is it going to make?

Maybe a little more yellow.

I was looking for a bright orange.

I think I've made it.

So I'm gonna grab my orange.

And remember, I'm just painting half of my butterfly.

So I'm gonna make some stripes.

Now you wanna work quickly so the paint doesn't dry.

There we go.

And this is where the card stock comes in handy because it does not absorb as much into the paper.

So when you're smashing it down, it will actually stay a little wet.

Does not dry on the paper as much or doesn't dry wrinkly.

So there's that.

What if I added some white to this?

What would happen?

Let's see.

Ooh, it create a lighter color, a lighter orange.

Different hue.

So let's get that down here.

I'm gonna cover the whole half of it.

Isn't painting the best?

Now, I think I'm gonna use a different paint brush.

I'm gonna get some blue and put it down.

And then I'm gonna get some white and maybe some more red.

And let's see what color I mix here.

This is the fun part is mixing all the colors.

Ooh, looks like that blue is very dominant.

That means it's not wanting to share with the other colors.

Let's see if I add more.

If I add yellow what would happen?

Oh, it's turning green.

Blue and yellow make green.

So I'm gonna add some dots.

Just a few dots like this.

Okay, what color should I do next?

I'm gonna get a little different brush.

Maybe I'll do some black and I'll just keep it black, and I'll go around the edges like this.

Now you'll remember, when I smash it, it's not gonna stay this exact pattern.

All right, let's keep going all the way around.

Maybe around this way.

Okay, let's see.

Maybe I'll make, if you notice, I'll show you in the text.

You'll see right here, it has like little black pieces that connect on the wings.

They're called segments.

So little segments on the wings.

Maybe I'll do that.

All right, maybe there, there, and there.

Okay, that's what it's looking like.

Needs just a little bit more color and then we're ready for the best part to smash it down.

So excited.

I'm not even using all of my tools yet.

Maybe I'll do a little bit of red.

What color would you choose if you were here with me?

I wonder.

I wish I could bring you guys over here into the studio where I am.

That would be so much fun.

And then I could read your favorite stories, and we could do projects together.

Maybe one day.

Maybe I'll use a little bit of yellow here.

A lot of yellow.

Hey, maybe a little more white.

I'm really piling on this paint.

(Mrs Lara laughs) I think I'm ready for the big smash.

Let me show you what it's looking like so far.

So look, this is what it's looking like.

Now the really cool part about this project is you can learn about symmetry.

Symmetry is a word that means it's the same on one side and the other.

So here we go.

All right, I'm putting it down.

I'm holding my breath.

Maybe I'll use one of my tools.

Smash, smash, smash, smash, smash.

I really gotta get in there and get all the corners.

And look, the paint is leaking out.

Stay in there, paint.

Stay in there.

Don't come out.

I don't know why.

I'm always getting you guys messy.

What color do you think you're gonna see the most of?

Oh, I'm nervous.

Ready?

Here we go.

(gasps) It's a beautiful butterfly.

Look at that.

Look at this part of the butterfly right over here.

You can really see the segments.

Now I noticed that I missed a few parts right here in the body.

So if that happens to you and it doesn't get smashed all the way, just come back in with your paint brush.

I want my body black.

So I'm just gonna paint that black there.

And there you go.

You hang this out to dry and you can put it on a popsicle stick and it can be a puppet for you to go around in your backyard and run and try to find butterflies, just like the one you made.

So I hope that you try that activity at home.

I'm gonna leave you with a recommended text that I have, and we've been looking at that book.

We won't have time to read it here, but if you wanna continue to learn more about butterflies, check out "Monarch Butterfly" by Gail Gibbons.

She uses beautiful watercolor illustrations and may go into much more detail about the butterfly life cycle, which is what we learned about today.

And it even talks about the purpose of antenna and how a butterfly gets nectar from flowers.

And it has instructions for how to raise your own butterfly.

That would be fun.

You could be like the mom butterfly or the dad butterfly, or the aunt butterfly.

Ooh, I would wanna do that.

So I hope that you check this book out in your local library or on the Sora app.

Looks like it's time for us to say goodbye, but I hope that you come back tomorrow because we're going to read the story of a very lonely flying creature.

Not a butterfly, but a firefly.

And there's a little surprise at the end with sparkling lights.

So until then, a big squeeze and a big smooch from me to you.

Goodbye, boys and girls.

Have a wonderful, wonderful day wherever you are.

Goodbye.

(bouncy music)