Summer Project Update #3

On Tuesday, July 6th, three healthy caterpillars arrived in our mailbox. On Thursday, July 8th two crawled to the top of their tiny container and transformed into the pupa stage and hid inside their chrysalids. On Friday, the third caterpillar decided it would be fun to hang upside down and she joined her friends in the pupa stage. On Saturday, July 10th, we gently removed the three chrysalids and safety pinned them to the netting inside their habitat to wait for them to burst from their chrysalids to reveal to us their beautiful adult selves. We waited...and waited...and waited. Finally on Friday, July 15th two of the butterflies revealed themselves to us, and on Saturday the third one did as well. We were the proud owners of three beautiful painted lady butterflies. We fed them a sugary water concoction and watched them flutter around inside their netted home, and drink the sugary goodness we had made for them to enjoy. When we returned home from Worship on Sunday, July 16th the butterflies looked like they were going wild, so my daughter, K thought we should release them because they looked sad in such a tiny habitat.

K gently unzipped the habitat to give the butterflies the freedom they yearned for.

One of the butterflies sat still on Daddy's hand, but only for a second - he was ready to GO! We watched the butterflies fly higher and farther away and said, "Goodbye." It was such a joy to watch them for the few days we had them, and now with each butterfly we see in our yard we wonder if she was the one we watched for days and cared for.

After the butterflies were released, we continued to learn about them. L worked on some story sequencing cards that went along with Eric Carle's, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."

We found this free printable from Enchanted Learning and she put the stages of a butterflies life in correct order.

The insect section from our Considering God's Creation curriculum tied in nicely with our study on butterflies, and the older two worked on a few more pages for their Science notebooks.

The butterfly summer project is complete! My boy's summer project is all about reptiles and amphibians, and we still have one more thing to do before his project is complete. I have promised him a trip to a pet store to look, not buy, just look. I love my son, but I just can't handle having a reptile or amphibian living in my house! We've had many frogs and toads as temporary residents, because my little man always wants to return them back to their natural habitat within a few days of capturing them. I know he'd love to have a tank full of little frogs - maybe one day when I know he's old enough to clean the habitat and feed them all by himself! No promises though!