raising butterflies

 

 Raising butterflies has been a spectacular experience!  

There was a teacher across the hall from me at Timberlea School who raised and released them with her class every year.  She would make it a cross curricular experience, talking butterflies in poetry, math, art and of course science.  When I got the email advertising a kit from Education Station and for a reasonable price I was pumped, ordered it immediately.

These 'Painted Lady Butterflies' were darn cool!

The whole family has enjoyed watching each stage happen. We began by naming them, which was pretty funny.  We tried to go alphabetical.  I pulled the story books I had on caterpillars/butterflies, bought a really good non-fiction and found some great stuff online.  We sadly didn't make it to the library to pull more books.  Having this experience broadened my ladies' interests and we even went looking for Frog Life Cycle, Chicken Life Cycle and a few other life cycle videos on youtube.  They were fascinated and it has been fun to feed that interest and watch the girls enjoy!!!!!!

 Everyday the ladiess would stop by to check on their development.  They were quick to notice changes and movement.  It was also pretty awesome to hear them explain to people the different stages.  Best ever hearing Stella tell people that "our caterpillars are now in their chrysalises"!!!! We were pretty lucky and caught one of our butterflies just after it had emerged, like missed the real deal emergence within seconds... sigh...but it's wings were still bent and antenna rolled up.  Although we didn't see any actually emerge, watching it pump it's wings and unroll the antenna, we were all enthralled. Before going out camping for May Long Weekend we did the transfer to the enclosure and prepared the sugar water. They started emerging Monday - yeah!  It worked out perfectly to do the release at Joy School on Thursday. I kind of hijacked Emma's house and we made it all about the butterflies. It was super rad!!!!!  I think the pictures are evidence of the coolness of the whole experience.

 Of course we had to make a rad craft and talk about symmetry and patterns.

Seriously captivating!!!

 Love that some of the butterflies stuck around!  Spencer's shorts were apparently super attractive to the one butterfly.  After one flew out and landed on a flower the kids ran over and put their hands down beside it, much like what you would do for a lady bug and it actually walked onto Nathaniel. Of the 14 caterpillars 13 formed chrysalises and of those only 4 emerged as butterflies. From the 4 we had one with wings that never did open properly. Another 2 attempted to emerge but didn't make it for whatever reasons.  It was all a great/sad learning experience.  The little one with the irregular wings we opted to put beside a flower with a piece of orange from their enclosure and when we went to check before we went home it was no longer there, that made us hopeful.  

We wish them all the best.

 The coolness!

 The afternoon was so fun! 

 It was totally worth the $60 ($30 of which was the enclosure that we can use again). The faces of the kids.  For real, does not get much better then watching them have fantastic experiences.

 Totally again next year!

~ Mrs. P