Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Butterflies

One of Kayla's birthday gifts we got her this year was a butterfly habitat which in all fairness has been sort of a fun gift for all of us.
You send away for the caterpillars which we received in the mail two weeks ago and have since enjoyed watching them go through their changes daily.


They were so small when they first arrived




but quickly plumped up!




This is where we are as of today, the caterpillars are now in their chrysalis form and we are waiting patiently for them to come out as butterflies.




Over the weekend I thought it would be fun for the girls to get wrapped up and pretend they were in a chrysalis.
I told them they could put their butterfly wings on and I would wrap them with toilet paper and they could break free just like the butterflies will.
Brooklyn wasn't too sure about this at first so Kayla said she would do it and after Brooklyn watched Kayla laughing having fun of course she wanted in on it as well.





Once their wings dried off they were sent free flying throughout the house!




Since Kayla already learned all about the life cycle of a butterfly at school I thought I could use this opportunity to teach Brooklyn about it with some fun crafts.
We first made our caterpillar and then waited for our real caterpillars to make their chrysalis.





Once our caterpillars made their chrysalis it was time for Brooklyn to make the chrysalis for her butterfly.



Once the chrysalis was all done, it was time to say goodbye to the caterpillar,



She carefully placed him all the way inside the chrysalis




and then we covered up the ends, now we wait for our caterpillars to emerge into butterflies.
It says about 7 to 10 days so I told the girls that we should have butterflies by the end of next week which will be right about the time school gets out.
We'll keep you updated ;)



4 comments:

Kelli said...

How fun Shannon! I should look into doing that with the kids. I have spent a good amount of today on Pinterest looking for fun science type projects to do this summer.
Hope you are having a good week!

WhiteWhispers2u said...

That's so awesome! What a great experiment for your girls to do together.

Oh do show when they become butterflies :)

~Kim

Sarah said...

We have one of those and haven't tried it because the boys do it at school. You made it look like so much fun though and convinced me I need to send off for the rest of our kit and get started at home too.

{cindy} said...

oh this is so fun Shannon!!! we had one every year in my classroom...why oh why did I never get one for home!?:)
and I just love those butterfly wings! where did you get those?? (I might have asked you that already...if so, ignore me...i'm losing my summer filled mind right now!)
your crafts are so cute!
have a happy day shannon