Mayah's "toy" of choice as we browsed the isles of the beloved Toy's R Us was the Bugville Live Butterfly Treehouse. As soon as we came home we sent away for the live caterpillars so we could begin the oh so exciting process of watching them grow, turn into chrysalides, then hatch into beautiful Painted Lady Butterflies. I thought it was as cool as the kids did to watch the transformation ~ Ava even loved looking at the caterpillars and butterflies. The entire process took quite a long time so we were able to enjoy each stage for a while. We had the actual butterflies for about 2 and a half weeks before we let them go. It was definitely time because evidently we had 2 male butterflies and 3 females...and they were mating like crazy!! Once the females started laying 100s of eggs and they were hatching into little teeny tiny baby caterpillars I was majorly grossed out and had no desire to start my own breeding station to start the entire process over again.
The caterpillar as it's turning itself into a chrysalid...
All the chrysalides after we transferred them to the habitat...
The Painted Lady eating the orange slices, carnations and sugar water (the black thing coming out of it's mouth area is it's tongue)...
Trying to get the butterflies to move without banging on the net...by the end of our time with them the kids were definitely banging on the net, we realized they weren't quite as delicate as we first thought...
1 comment:
How fun. I remember doing that in my kindergarten class with monarch butterflies. Hopefully that cures their desire for a pet for now. :)
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