Butterfly Garden

Over the past few weeks, we watched caterpillars turn into butterflies! :)

I got a kit from Insect Lore and ordered our little cup of caterpillars. The kids loved checking on them every day to see how much they had grown. There was a lot of excitement when they could watch the caterpillars crawl around the cup haha.

I'm really glad that we were able to watch this process. But I have to say that I was totally grossed out by it the whole time. I'm not a fan of bugs, and I willingly invited them into my house. And they were creepy and crawly and gross. But I did it. For my kids.   :)

Day 1...such tiny little things.

Day 6....they got really big, really fast.

Day 10...ready to start forming their chrysalises!

We had to wait 3 days for the caterpillars to form their chrysalises, so there was not much activity. The kids kind of forgot about them; they didn't think this phase was all that exciting haha. But on Day 14, it was safe to move them to their new habitat, and watching Mommy do that was a bit more exciting. We had to carefully transfer them into the new habitat, and the kiddos got to see how they wiggled back and forth in defense. "Look, Mommy! They're moving!"

So gross.

Day 14

We checked them every day, and the kids couldn't wait to see their butterflies. They thought 3 days was a long time to wait with no activity...they had to wait all week for the butterflies to emerge. But once, they did, they kept emerging pretty quickly! We soaked some cotton balls with sugar water for them to eat, and waited to see if they would all emerge {the company guarantees 3 of the 5 will become butterflies}.

Day 19: Butterfly #1

Day 20: Butterfly #2

Day 20: Butterflies #3 and #4 snuck out of their cocoons pretty quickly! 

Day 21: we woke up to find Butterfly #5 had made his way out too!

All 5 of our caterpillars emerged as healthy butterflies! The kids were so excited to see them fly around the little enclosure. They each claimed a butterfly as their own, and they were convinced they knew which was which {they all look exactly the same haha!} If the butterfly climbed up the net, they would say, "Look! I'm climbing!" or whatever "their" butterfly did.

Today, on day 22, it was time to let our butterflies go into the wild! I asked the kids if they wanted to hold a butterfly, and both Maddie and Aiden were more than ready to hold one. Eli had zero interest. Which worked out perfectly, because only 2 of the butterflies let us hold them, while the others were more than ready to fly away haha. 

This little guy loved Aiden! He didn't want to go...it took a lot of coaxing to get him to fly away.

It was fun to watch this process with the kids. My animal/creature-loving Maddie was really sad to say goodbye to the butterflies, but she was excited to see them fly free to go off and do butterfly things.