Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Butterfly map

Last night, Genevieve picked up a pile of things I dumped on the floor when doing a minor repair on a coffee table, and she wanted a reward. I was up for some fun, so I had her choose a non-food thing, and she chose a "butterfly map." Not having a butterfly map lying around the house, I thought about drawing one but elected instead to start with the computer, hoping to find some map-like thing with great pictures or art. I can try to draw butterflies, but it's really cool to see the wide variety of wing patterns that exist "in the real world."

I found a site on which you could click on your state and county and see a list of photo links to butterflies sighted in that locale, and somehow we got around to the NOVA website and found The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies. It is the story of the North American monarch butterfly migration, and is available for viewing in six segments, so the two girls and I started watching it. It became our bedtime story -- Reesa fell asleep to it -- and Genevieve was completely still for the entire program, which I think means that she was emotionally satisfied with her day and enthralled with the program.

The most fascinating part was listening and responding to her questions about why some people would be chopping down the trees that the butterflies used in their Mexican sanctuaries. Yes, it wasn't nice. Those people did it because they were poor and needed some way to make money, so they cut down the trees and sold the wood. They needed money to get by, maybe to buy food. Yes, maybe they had children. The man said they were dangerous because maybe they had guns, because they didn't want to get caught doing something illegal.

That was only about three or four minutes of the almost hour-long program, and most of the remainder was spent watching the wonder of their life-cycle and migration. I love books and storytime, but I do like the option of finding these little gems on this thing we call the internet.

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