To assist students in identifying the caterpillars' body parts and finding evidence for the function of each.

To help children learn to make clear and detailed descriptions of monarch attributes and behavior.

To encourage students to record evidence of growth and change by observing a monarch at different stages and drawing a series of pictures to represent what they see.

Six tiny caterpillars were placed in separate petri dishes on the counter. Each dish also contained a piece of fresh milkweed leaf. Caterpillars were generally found on the softer underside of the leaves. In two petri dishes we placed a penny under part of the leaf, so children could compare the size of something familiar to the size of the caterpillar. At first, the caterpillars were difficult to see with the naked eye. We set up a video flex camera to magnify the image of the tiny caterpillars and allow students to observe the organisms, their structures and their behavior. Under high magnification, the children could compare the caterpillar size to the penny size to understand how much the image was enlarged.

• Lesson One: What do you see?

• Lesson Two: What do you see? Part 2

• Lesson Three: What do we know about our caterpillars?

• Summary

This is the first of two lessons that focus on observational skills. Children observe the monarchs over time and develop a shared vocabulary for describing the caterpillar's structures and behavior . They will also describe attributes such as size, color, and pattern. After sharing ideas and descriptions, they will draw pictures of caterpillars, which will serve as records for comparison.

• 20 minutes - Students watch the caterpillars and talk about details. They describe the size, color, pattern, structures, behaviors and leafy environment.

• 20 minutes - Students draw a detailed picture of the caterpillar in their "Butterfly Journals." Students also include the date and words that tell about their picture.

Initially, children were fascinated by the tiny size of each caterpillar. The caterpillars were one day old. A penny was placed underneath a caterpillar that was on the edge of a broken leaf. Students talked about the length of the caterpillar by saying it was "as big as Abraham Lincoln? nose." Most of the monarch caterpillars were in the middle and on the underside of the leaves. Children also noticed that there were tiny pinholes in the milkweed leaf and wondered if the caterpillar had eaten there. Although the children could not specifically identify the eyes or mandibles, they thought that the black beady part at one end of the caterpillar was the head. They noticed two little bumps near the head and wondered if those would become the antennae. They identified the pattern of stripes on the skin as dark, clear, dark, clear, and so on.

After sharing their observations and talking about different structures and attributes, children drew a picture of a caterpillar in their butterfly journals. Some children drew their caterpillar life size, while others drew it in a larger scale and added more details.