Kindergarten Homeschool Science: Butterfly Garden

Thursday, October 16, 2008

For Belle's first big science unit, we ordered one of these butterfly gardens. It was such a neat experience-well worth the money (although I shopped around a bit online when I ordered it).

We were first shipped the butterfly habitat, with an order form for the caterpillars. Five teeny caterpillars arrived once I sent in the request. Their food was also in the same container. So for the first 2 weeks or so, all we had to do was observe them-they grew so much larger and then began to spin their cocoons from the top of the jar. Once they were attached well, I moved them to the habitat, where they emerged.

The species we received were Painted Ladies whose life expectancy is 2-4 weeks. I really didn't want to have to explain why they were napping for so long in a couple of weeks, so we released them after watching them for a week. But it was so nice to have them, even if it was just a week and they were just butterflies. Baby got pretty close to saying "butterfly" really clearly. And Belle and Boo took turns "feeding" their pets (orange slices worked for us). And I loved having something "living" in our kitchen to welcome me each morning. Of course my interpretation of a welcome is pretty loose, because those guys could sleep really late. But by my second cup of coffee, they were flitting around their habitat and I enjoyed seeing that up close.

We waited for Mom-Mom & Opa's visit to release them (interpret: Mom put off releasing her new pets as long as she could-so sad...).





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