Butterflies!

A few months ago Kaitlyn started getting really into butterflies and the one thing that she wanted for her birthday was this Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden. The older class at preschool had one in their classroom and she kept talking about wanting her own butterfly cage. She was so excited when she opened her birthday presents and received exactly what she had asked for. So...it was time to raise our own butterflies!

The butterfly garden included a coupon to order live caterpillars by mail. There were also instructions on what to do with the caterpillars and how to care for them as they became butterflies. I ordered the caterpillars online and a few days later, our box arrived!

Inside the box was this cup containing five little fuzzy caterpillars and food. I was scared that Kaitlyn might shake or drop the cup, but she was very good at just keeping them on the table and watching the caterpillars eat and crawl around.

They nearly doubled in size over the next few days and by the end of the week, just as the instructions described, they each crawled to the top of the cup and hung upside-down.

After a few more days they had hardened and formed into chrysalides.

We were then instructed to take the paper from the top of the cup with the chrysalides hanging and attach it to the side of the butterfly garden. Then it was time to wait...

After another week I woke up and looked into the garden to find that a butterfly had emerged! It was pretty exciting, even for an adult (at least for me). I wish I could have actually seen the butterflies emerge from the chrysalides, but I kept missing it. There were two times when I literally turned my back for a few minutes and when I turned around, they had already hatched!

Butterfly #2 hatched from the top left chrysalis as I was in the kitchen getting a cup of coffee. It happened that quickly.

Kaitlyn really liked seeing the butterflies in her cage and had fun gathering flowers and sprinkling them with sugar water to feed them. We kept them in the cage and observed them for about a week. They were really fun to watch and I'll admit that for most of the time, I was probably more interested than Kaitlyn was. 

Finally, it was time to set them free. Alex and Kieran happened to be visiting at the same time so they got to do it together. We stuck pieces of watermelon on some skewers to coax the butterflies out and so we could see them up close. I honestly thought the butterflies would fly away after a few seconds but they really enjoyed the watermelon and stuck around for a while.

Seriously, they did not want to fly away.

One landed on Kaitlyn's shirt, but she kind of freaked out and made me take it off before I could take pictures. 

Colin got in on the action too.

Any time now...

Eventually, even the kids got bored so we transferred the last two butterflies to a flower bush and left them there to fly away on their own.

Overall, it was a really fun project for kids (and grownups) of all ages. It took some patience, but in the end it was worth it to see the caterpillars transform and to set the butterflies free. I'm really glad Kaitlyn took an interest in this - I hope she enjoyed it as much as I did!