Metamorphosis

When I was teaching we had a mom purchase a "butterfly kit" for our classroom.  It was a really cool thing to watch so I decided to do it with Emily this spring.  On a Monday morning I placed the order for caterpillars and all that we needed to watch them turn into butterflies. They were promised to arrive at our door on Wednesday. 

We quickly began talking about the process of how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

We have also been doing crafts.  First Emily colored different size caterpillars and cut them out and Emily put them in order from smallest to largest and largest to smallest.  She loved this and did really well with it.

Then Emily painted a "leaf" and she colored another caterpillar to put on this leaf.  Next, Emily punched holes in it so it looked like the caterpillar has been eating the leaf.  It is now hanging in her room.

As we watched this process we read lots of books on caterpillars and butterflies.

One of the books we read is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I found a coloring book that is the same as the actual book.

We also made a caterpillar puppet that turns into a butterfly.  Emily named her Cookie.

She turns the puppet inside out...

Then Cookie is a beautiful butterfly.

Our caterpillars arrived in little plastic containers.  Their food is in the bottom of the containers.  I had to explain to Emily that outside the butterfly lays  eggs on the leaves so that when they hatch they can begin eating but our caterpillars don't eat leaves.  They have a special caterpillar food since they will be living inside.  I decided to take a picture everyday to chart their growth.  Here are our 12 little tiny caterpillars.  They will one day be Painted Lady Butterflies.

Look how much they grew in one day!!!

April 9th, big day for our caterpillars...our first chrysalis!  Do you see it on the far right in the picture below?  So exciting.  Right before they form the chrysalis they hang upside down like a letter "j".   You can see many of them hanging upside down.  All but one caterpillar is on the top even if they aren't hanging yet.  It seems as if the caterpillars in the container to the right are older and slightly ahead of the container to the left.  When we left for a birthday party this morning we had no chrysalis but when we got home we had one.

The caterpillars all changed quickly into their chrysalis form.  By Sunday night, we only had one caterpillar left and Monday night the last one had changed.  Jeff and I actually got to watch one of them shake and drop the last of it's caterpillar skin off and form the chrysalis.  It was amazing to watch.  They form the chrysalis on the paper on the top of the container.  We had to wait a few days for them to harden and then we took the paper off and pinned them to the sides of the butterfly house.

Now we wait.  It takes 7 to 10 days for the butterfly to come out of the chrysalis.  We have to spray the butterfly house with water each day so they don't dry out too much.

April 18 (Monday)

Our first butterfly emerged from it's chrysalis.

April 19 (Tuesday)

Ten more butterflies emerged.

 Callie, our cat, was in heaven watching the butterflies.  We had to hang it from the ceiling fan in the living room so that Callie couldn't get to the butterflies.

We put sugar water in the butterfly house and gave their wings some time to get stronger.

April 21 (Thursday)

Our last butterfly emerged right as we took the house outside to release the 11 other butterflies.

Then it was time to release the other butterflies.  This last butterfly is not  ready to go today but the other butterflies are very ready!

The red stuff is butterfly poop.  Emily thought it was really cool that they had red poop:)

Emily unzipped the top of the butterfly house!  You are free little butterflies!

There goes a butterfly!!!

It's flying away!

Some of them flew out of the yard.  Other butterflies flew to the grass or a plant near by.  This has been such a great experience.  We hope that our butterflies enjoy their freedom.  We enjoyed watching them grow from tiny caterpillars to beautiful butterflies!!!