Butterflies

For McIver's birthday back in October, GranGran and GranDaddy gave him a butterfly habitat.  It included a certificate to send off for some live caterpillars that we could watch grow, turn into chrysalids and then become Painted Lady butterflies.  I wasn't sure how well it would work (or how long the butterflies would live) if we ordered them in the fall so we waited until spring.

The caterpillars arrived two weeks ago.

We watched them eat this peanut-butter looking food and grow to many times their original size.

Then they turned into chrysalids.

We removed them from the jar ...

... and pinned them inside the habitat.

Then we waited almost 2 weeks for them to turn into butterflies.

Finally, one morning this week, McIver checked the habitat and saw that the first butterfly had emerged.

There he is in the back corner of the habitat.  We had some fresh flowers so we followed the instructions and put some sugar water on the flowers so they would have something to eat.

Olivia was in charge of making sure they wouldn't escape into the house while we were at school.

Mac was in charge of holding the sugar water.  I'm pretty sure we were late to school that day because we were taking such good care of the butterflies.

Thursday was a big day!  All of the butterflies had  emerged and had time to strengthen their wings.  They were flying all around the habitat so we decided it was time to let them go.  (Or, maybe the kids just wanted to procrastinate from doing their homework.)

McIver lent them a hand.

All in all, it was a fun experience.  Olivia and McIver loved watching every stage of the butterflies' development from tiny caterpillar to full-grown butterfly.  And, I thank you for your time if you managed to read through this entire post!