Butterflies In The House!

Recently, Lauren kept asking us to read her "The Hungry Caterpillar".  We read it many times a day and listened to a reading of it in the car, over and over again.  Lauren was fascinated with the fact that a caterpillar would go into a cocoon and come out a butterfly.  So Chad and I decided it might be fun to get a butterfly kit for the house.  We could watch the entire transformation and then release the butterflies into our yard.

The butterfly net/cage arrived and a few days later, we got 5 caterpillars.  They were in a plastic cup and about a half inch long.  

                               

They stayed in the cup and ate the food at the bottom.  Over the course of a week, they grew to about an inch and a half in size.  And eventually they made their way to the top of the cup and began to form a chrysalis.  

       

We made sure they all formed a chrysalis and left them alone for 2 days.  Then we moved them to the butterfly net and watched them for another 5 days.  One morning we came downstairs and found a butterfly in the bottom of the net.  Soon, the others followed, and we had 5 butterflies!!

                           

                               

We kept them for two days, making sure to feed them sugar water, on a large leaf.  Apparently, butterflies drink up the sugar water through a tube on their head, and that is how they feed.  As you can see, we learned some new stuff about butterflies through this process.  It was really cool!

Soon it was time to release the butterflies.  We took them outside, once it was warm enough and opened up the net.  It took a few minutes before they flew out, but we managed to catch one on our strawberry plant on the back deck, before it flew away for good!!

We had so much fun with this project, that we decided to do it all over again next spring.