With our butterfly enclosure ready and our first chrysalises ready to be hung, Miss G and I had to get a little creative this morning. When raising butterflies in my classroom, I used to hang the chrysalises from the inside of a wooden block that was open on two sides, but without one of those at our disposal, we decided to try and craft one. A box, some packaging tape, and a utility knife later, we had this. As you can see, it certainly ain’t pretty. Buuuut, it gets the job done.
Once the newly-formed chrysalises had been left alone for 12 – 24 hours, we very carefully lifted the lids off of the containers, gently loosening the webbing off of the container walls with a paintbrush if needed. Then we simply created tape rolls using a good strong masking tape, and stuck the lids to the ceiling of our homely box block. This is where they’ll hang now until the final step of their transformation takes place.
As for our other guys who are still busy eating, they all got a good container cleaning and fresh food. Let’s hope this is a welcomed change and not something that harms their ability to begin their transformation.
And while I was busy cutting, hanging, and cleaning, Miss G worked on her own project beside me. When she was done, she brought me her scrap cardboard and explained, “First we have fuzzy yittle caterpillars, and then they build their chrysalises. You wait for a long, long, loooooong time, and they POP out and be butterflies! Then the butterflies will fly, fly, fly away.” She never ceases to amaze me.
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I’ve just come on to your blog to find some interesting presents/gifts to give to some of my daughters little friends – one turning 4 (I can’t quite believe it!) and one turning 3 – as I’ve been coming across some great ideas in your blog and just happened across this blog about raising butterflies. The reason it stood out to me is because we’ve been given silk worms to raise (from said friend) so it’s been interesting to read about raising butterflies. What really did interest me though was the fact that when you did the blog for the butterflies, Miss G would have been about the same age as my little girl (Phoebe) who’s just turned 3 a few weeks ago. It’s really interesting to see where Miss G is now in comparison to where she was at 3 and makes me feel OK about where Phoebe’s at in her development – just starting to draw things like Miss G did in the butterfly blog. I did say to myself that I was going to try taking a look at what you were doing with her last year and it’s now given me more incentive to do so as it makes more sense to be doing the activities that you were doing then … She does a Montessori Playgroup with me and I can see the changes as she grows. It all happens so quickly!!!
Thank you soooo much for your ongoing inspiration!