Raising our own butterflies!

The caterpillars arrives last Friday! We passes them around the circle, and let the children get a good look at them. This week we shared information and read books about the life cycle of the butterfly. All living things have a life cycle including butterflies...egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly.

Today we learned that the third stage, the chrysalis takes about 8 days. The caterpillar finds a safe place to rest. With a silk thread that comes out of a hole just below its mouth(spinneret), the caterpillar spins a silk pad to attach to. The caterpillar hangs from this pad. Soon, the caterpillars' skin splits open, from head to abdomen, revealing a shiny case underneath- the chrysalis. Inside the chrysalises, the caterpillars becoming completely liquid and reforming themselves into butterflies. The butterflies will push from inside and slowly struggles to get out, until the case splits open.

Over the last several days the children have been observing the caterpillars,they noticed that all the caterpillars have attached themselves to the pad, and have found a save place to rest. We all decided at this point, we will not move the caterpillars, we will just observe the caterpillars do their "thing" and turn into beautiful butterflies!

We all are so excited to have the opportunity to witness one of Nature's spectacular events...The Life Cycle of a Butterfly!