Pollinating the flowers, the beautiful monarch butterfly pauses to show off her bright orange color. Cause a flutter when you animate her satiny wings!

Now you can catch a beautiful butterfly without a net. Your children will love fluttering them around the room for active learning fun. Children love to learn about nature when they can be involved in the learning process.

Or you can use the butterfly for a character building object lesson. Monarch Butterflies migrate all the way across the United States to Mexico? That's a long, long way for such a tiny little creature to fly.

Let me start at the beginning. The monarchs lay their eggs on the milkweed plant. The milkweed may be a nasty weed to the farmers, but it is a very important plant to the monarch. God gave the butterfly the wisdom to know to lay her eggs on the milkweed.

When the hungry larvae hatches, it begins to eat the milkweed. As it eats, it grows and grows. Perhaps you've watched a caterpillar crawl along the ground or on a low branch munching on crunchy green leaves. Caterpillars are kind of ugly and the ground can be a dangerous place for a caterpillar to crawl. He might get stepped on. An amazing thing happens to that caterpillar. He changes into a butterfly.

Do you realize after a caterpillar becomes a butterfly he doesn't eat leaves any more. Want to know something else? You'll never see it crawling around on the ground again. That butterfly is completely changed. It doesn't hang around the same places anymore. Instead of munching on crunchy leaves, it flutters from flower to flower to drink sweet nectar with a special straw called a proboscis. When the proboscis isn't being used it curls out of the way like a party horn.

The ugly caterpillar is converted or changed into a beautiful butterfly. It becomes a brand new creature. When a person asks Jesus into their heart, they are converted. They become brand new on the inside. Oh, I'm not trying to suggest we look different on the outside, but on the inside you are brand new. You don't hang around the same places you did before you asked Jesus into your heart. You don't watch the same TV programs. You don't read the same books. You are different. You desire to fill your mind and heart with things that please Jesus because now you are a child of God.

© Copyright 2004 Let Us Teach Kids 1453 Otoes Pl.; Jacksonville, FL 32259 828 659-1919
www.letusteachkids.com. This skit was taken from Hear the Ocean Roar.  Butterfly  

AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE. Laurence Pringle. ISBN 0-531-3002-1  

BUTTERFLY HOUSE. Eve Bunting.  MONARCH BUTTERFLY. Gail Gibbons. ISBN 0-8234-0909-0  

MONARCH MAGIC. Lynn Rosenblatt. ISBN 1-885593-23-6  

A NEW BUTTERFLY. Pamela Hickman. 1-55074-202-7