The kids have been "growing" butterflies for the last few weeks.
I bought this set online and ordered the caterpillars. The kids have had a wonderful past two weeks, watching the teeny-tiny caterpillars eat and grow, spin silk and attach themselves in their crysalis. I did not take pictures of this action, the jar with the caterpillars got pretty nasty looking!
Then we moved them into their mesh cage and within a week, they were lovely painted lady butterflies. We fed them sugar water for a few days and then released them into my mom's yard on Saturday.
The Boy scooped each butterfly out carefully and tried setting them onto the flowers. A few of them had a hard time figuring out what to do once they were released. One of them just wanted to hang out on The Boy's arm all day!
The Girl wanted to hold a butterfly too but when she reached out to the butterfly she quickly pulled back and said, "I'm just shy...maybe I'll try to hold one next time".
One of them hovered on his hand briefly before taking off over the house.
Two of them preferred to walk on the ground from flower to flower (one of the butterfly's wings didn't develop properly when he came out of the cocoon so we made sure he had a special spot under the flower bush).
This one finally took off after the first one, flying over the house.
This was such a beautiful experience for the kids and even me, watching something develop from tiny creeping caterpillar, instinctively into cocoon and then flying away, right out of our hands.
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