Butterflies...

The Klick Family did an exciting Spring project...we grew butterflies!  Painted Lady butterflies...

We bought the Insect Lore Live Butterfly Pavillion, ordered our caterpillars (5 of them), and began watching the magic!


The butterfly larvae came in a small plastic cup...which also contained their food...

They ate and ate...and got bigger and bigger.  After about a week or so, the big, fat caterpillars crawled to the top of the container, hung upside down, and turned into chrysalides!  Once they were hanging, the transformation happened so quickly.  I was actually very shocked by how fast they changed.  One minute they were caterpillars...and the next, pupas!  In the words of Avery, "Metamorphosis is AMAZING!"

At this point, we had to transfer the chrysalides into the butterfly habitat.  They were attached to a thin paper disk (at the top of the cup), and we just had to pin the disk to the mesh side of the pavillion.  They remained in the pupal stage for another week or so...and then, one day, we had butterflies!  Unfortunately, we missed the actual emergences...but we did get to see a few freshly hatched butterflies, with wet and folded wings (it, apparently, takes a few hours for their wings to fully dry and fill with blood).

It was fun watching the butterflies fly around their habitat.  We fed them orange slices and used a dropper to sprinkle a sugar-water mixture on some pink carnations we placed on the pavillion floor.  The kids loved watching the butterflies' long tongues collect the water droplets...

We kept the butterflies in the pavillion for about a week (while we waited for a day with temperatures above 55 degrees) before we released them in our yard.  Avery and Noel were sad to see the butterflies go...but happy to finally get to touch them!

Here are some photos of the big release...

The last butterfly took off, but Avery wasn't quite ready to say good-bye...

The kids really tried to be gentle with their beloved butterflies...but, as is often the case with 2 and 4 year olds, their "gentle" wasn't really gentle enough.  The butterflies got a bit roughed-up.  Luckily, it was a very windy day, so the butterflies' departures were aided by the strong and steady wind streams...creating the illusion of them happily flying away to begin their lives of freedom.  I actually think the wind caused the kids to be a bit too rough with our fragile-winged friends...the littles were just trying to fight the breeze and hold onto the beautiful creatures long enough to get a good look. (Note to self:  Pick less windy days for any future releases...)

This activity was so much fun...as well as educational!  We did some internet research on and checked out library books about butterflies and their life cycle.  The kids had lots of fun checking on the caterpillars/pupas/butterflies each day.  We will definitely repeat this project next Spring!