With spring now in full force, it was time for a new addition to our ongoing play dough kit collection. Though my first thought was to put together a spring garden set, we’ve made several very similar kits in the past and our garden set got a ton of play last spring, so I figured we’d switch it up this time around.
This morning, after two months of outdoor meet-ups {gotta enjoy the cool weather while we have it!}, our play school co-op resumed its usual themed indoor play dates. Grae and I were lucky enough to be the first hosts, and with our focus being on favourite children’s books this month, we got to plan a morning around Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Though we won’t be able to raise butterflies this spring, we did get to learn all about them today in our butterfly-themed crafting class at Bright Minds. We kept things pretty simple since the class is for 2 and 3 year olds and focused on the four main stages of the butterfly’s life cycle, the parts of the butterfly’s body, and the fact that butterflies are insects. Here are the projects Grae worked on…
The 4 stages of the butterfly’s life cycle in pasta…
Well, the big day finally came… As of yesterday morning, all 8 of our caterpillars had successfully completed the transition to butterflies (yay for a 100% success rate!) We watched them for one final day, the newbies drying and pumping up their wings and the others slurping up juice from fresh fruit, knowing that if the weather cooperated, today would be release day.
With the rain clouds gone, the sun shining, and still plenty of time before dark, we decided to set our butterflies free as soon as Gracen woke up from her nap. Before heading into the backyard, we had a little chat about what releasing the butterflies actually meant. We talked about how they’d enjoyed their time with us, but they’d also love flying free in nature. We talked about the things they’d do once released, like fly, drink nectar, and lay eggs… And we talked about the fact that once they were released, they wouldn’t be coming back to us. This initially made her a little sad, but she was okay with it after I explained that they had things to do and they’d be alright on their own.
Because there were a couple of butterflies enjoying the orange when we were ready to take them outside, I decided to make the somewhat risky move of taking the orange slice, butterflies perched atop, outside on its own. The hut was positioned close to a door, and luckily neither flew off before I safely got outdoors. In fact, this little one continued to slip up juice from the orange for quite a while, even once completely free to go.
With our two hungry butterflies already outside and the rest of the fruit removed from the bottom of the hut, it was time to take the entire enclosure out. Though I’ve done it on my own in the past, this truly is a two person job. I gently shooed the butterflies hanging out near the bottom of the enclosure up to the top, collected the four flaps at the opening, and Brad unpinned it from the ceiling. Walking very slowly in order to keep the enclosure taut and not squish any butterflies, we brought the whole thing outside, laid it on its side in the grass, and opened up the bottom.
While you might expect them to be in a rush to fly off to their freedom, for the most part, they’re not. Except for one, I retrieved the butterflies from inside the hut by gently coaxing them to climb onto my finger, then brought them out into the open.
The cool part is that most will hang around a while, giving you a great opportunity to see them up close without mesh intruding on your view.
This is also a great time for little ones to ‘hold’ a butterfly too. All you have to do gently coax the butterfly {without touching their wings obviously} into climbing onto your finger, then place your finger on the edge of the child’s hand to make a careful transfer. You can do it lots of different ways, but I personally like putting the butterfly on the topside of the child’s hand as it prevents the gut reaction of closing the fingers around the butterfly when it decides to fly off.
When they decide to go, some will fly off high into the blue sky until you lose sight, while others will land on a nearby plant. Another possibility is that they’ll fly for a bit and decide to touch down on the grass, so be sure to be mindful of where you’re walking.
I’m so, so glad that we decided to do raise butterflies with Miss G this year. As each butterfly eventually made it’s way off, Gracen would call out, “Buh bye, butterfly! Have a funny day!” – a happy goodbye. It’s been an amazing learning experience, and without a doubt, she’s learned a ton. She uses all kinds of new words now and can tell you all about the butterfly life cycle and butterfly parts. Best of all, she’s learned this all in a hands-on, meaningful way without actually realizing that she was learning. ☺
To see all of the posts in our Gracen Raises Butterflies series, click here.
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
Day 13: We woke up to our very first butterfly! We’re not sure when it actually emerged, but we found it still hanging upside down from it’s chrysalis pumping up and drying out its wings.
Then, not an hour later, as we were checking on our lone butterfly, we noticed a second one fully emerged too (quick little thing!)
Gracen was over the moon and wanted to call Papa at work immediately to let him know her big news.
It’s really hard to take a decent photo through the blinding pink of our DIY butterfly hut, but these two were together all day. If one was at the top of the enclosure, then so was the other. And when one would move to a new spot, the other would follow. They’re fast friends. ☺
The best part, however, is the names Gracen gave them tonight. I really can’t tell you which is which, but one is named Dorkus and the other is Salmon. I’ve always said I like unique names. ☺
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
Day 7: It’s official. All of our fuzzy little caterpillars have successfully built chrysalises and are hanging from their container lids waiting for the big transformation to occur.
Though it’ll still be several days until they start emerging as butterflies, this morning we moved our little table and hanging structure directly under our homemade butterfly hut. Now we wait patiently. As they start emerging, we’ll set out some food on top of the cardboard box and the butterflies will make their way up to the top portion of the hut while the others complete their transformation. We’re excited!!
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
(showing them the impromptu drawing she did of the butterfly life stages) ‘Yook, chrysalises. Yook what I made for you.’
‘Hello, yittle chrysalises! Yook, I’m a butterfly just like you’re going to be!’
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
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.
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
It’s day 4 with our caterpillars and look at what we have today! We woke up to find that three of our fuzzy little caterpillars had build their chrysalises over night. We were actually cleaning up from breakfast already when Gracen called out, “Some of the caterpillars built their chrysalises, Mama!”
And thank goodness. If they weren’t pupas today, I was going to go into their containers and do a major clean up. I know that school kits normally say that once the container is closed, leave it closed, and that handling them as little as possible is best, but it can’t be fun to live in your own poop. Besides, from what I read, serious butterfly raisers clean out caterpillar frass daily. For our 5 remaining caterpillars, it’s house cleaning day. Wish me luck!
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
With our fuzzy little friends happily in their new homes eating themselves silly, today Miss G and I went out to the garage to dig up one of the butterfly homes I made years ago when teaching my first ever Kindergarten class. Of course, there are probably many different butterfly huts available for purchase online, but I’m typically a fan of making things myself if I can. Such was the case 8 years too… Instead of purchasing a readymade butterfly home, I opted to purchase several of these inexpensive mesh hanging storage tubes and modify them a wee bit.
To start out, I carefully made two large perpendicular cuts on the very bottom of the storage unit in order to open it up. Then, very carefully, I snipped out all of the mesh dividers that created the separate compartments.
Next, using some picnic table covering plastic (found on large rolls at IKEA and hardware stores), I cut out circles just a hair larger than the circular openings along the sides of the tube. With a hot glue gun and a hand I was wiling to burn repeatedly for the sake of my students and soon-to-be butterflies (just kidding…um… kinda ☺), I glued the plastic windows to the inside of my tube to cover up the holes (gluing them to the outside would have undoubtedly been easier, but that would have also allowed my hot glue slip-ups to be more obvious, which simply was not acceptable at the time).
In order to create some homey resting ledges for my winged friends, I glued several brightly coloured faux flowers to the inside of the enclosure too.
Though very wrinkled from years of storage, our butterfly enclosure is now hung from the ceiling so it rests perfectly on the tiny little table our chrysalises are going to sit on when they’re ready.
In the meantime, since we’re not at the chrysalis stage yet, I pinned up the butterfly enclosure, set our caterpillar containers on the little wooden table, and set up a little reading and observing corner for her to enjoy.
Now to figure out how we’ll hang our chrysalises… While teaching, I stuck them (still attached to their container lids) to the ceiling of a large wooden block that was open on two sides, but since we don’t have one of those, I’m going to have to get a little creative. We shall see what we come up with!
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
After receiving our fuzzy little friends yesterday afternoon, Miss G and I were excited to get them settled into their new homes. Now while this particular kit said that we could leave the caterpillars right in the shipping container to build their chrysalises, I’ve always transferred them into smaller containers in the past, so I decided we’d go with what I know. That, and in my experience, some always progress slower than others, so having them in separate containers will allow us to hang the chrysalises in our butterfly home one at a time, as they are ready. It also makes it easier to whisk away a dead caterpillar if needed (the success rate of raising them indoors is about 80%, so you’re bound to lose one or two), though I’ve always taken the opportunity to explain the circle of life when it’s come up with my students.
In order to transfer the caterpillars into their new mini homes, Miss G and I retrieved a plastic glove, a small paint brush, a small spoon, and several small craft containers our good friend Little Miss Mama drilled holes into (the small take out containers you get for sauces work great for this purpose too – just use a tack to poke several holes in the lids).
With freshly washed hands, we carefully opened the shipping container and took a better look at our babies. Gracen supervised them closely as I scooped a small chunk of the provided artificial food into each container, making sure leave the dirty bits behind. With the food in the containers, I used a gloved finger to gently press it down into the bases.
Then, very carefully, we used the tip of our paintbrush to pick up our caterpillars one at a time and place them into their new homes.
While handling them as minimally as possible is definitely the key to success when raising caterpillars/butterflies, Miss G was absolutely desperate to hold one of her fuzzy friends. With clean hands and a promise not to move, I gently placed one in her little palm. He crawled around, she watched in wonder, and when he made his way off of her fingertip, we placed him in his new home.
Since the caterpillars will soon be building their chrysalises from the roofs of their homes (a.k.a. the inside of the container lids) and we’ll need to remove the lids to hang them in our butterfly home before the transformation occurs, we opted not to screw our lids on. Instead, we just set them on gently and will be extra careful around them.
In the next couple of days, we’ll be watching our caterpillars eat and grow while setting up their butterfly house. More fun to come soon!
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
When I saw that the awesome teachers’ store in our hometown, Vernon Teach & Learn, was selling butterfly larvae, I jumped on the opportunity and immediately put an order through by phone. Now while I’m well aware that some people may think raising butterflies in your home is a tad on the crazy side, I actually think it’s pretty awesome. It’s something I’ve done with my Kindergarten classes in the past and the process is nothing short of amazing. For a child to be able to witness tiny caterpillars grow, build chrysalises, and emerge as butterflies up close and personal all in a span of a few weeks is pretty special. I can’t wait to share the experience with Grae. Ten fuzzy little caterpillars (two of which will be adopted by a friend tomorrow) arrived to our doorstep today and we couldn’t be more excited.
To order butterfly larvae of your own, contact Vernon Teach & Learn. They are incredibly helpful and kind, and our caterpillars arrived here to Vancouver the day after ordering. Their larvae packages can be found here.
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
Back when we were living in Kuwait, I remember desperately longing for rain. The kind that lasts days and days and lends itself to cozy hoodies, movie afternoons, and pots of soup simmering on the stove. Well, I’m happy to say, I think I’ve officially had my fix. It’s been raining for several days in a row now, and though lazy afternoons on the couch watching documentaries and romantic comedies don’t exactly fit well with our current life, we’ve enjoyed the rain nonetheless.
That being said, sometimes enough is enough. After spending the morning pretending we were in the tropics {while actually at the conservatory}, we decided to spend our afternoon creating spring butterflies.
The project started off as a creative table… Some coffee filters, Mr. Sketch scented makers (my absolute favourite as a child), Crayola markers, and a few bingo dabbers.
Grae decorated her coffee filters independently for a while, and then asked me to join her to finish them off.
Afterwards, Miss G used an easy-to-squeeze spray bottle to soak the filters pretty thoroughly.
While waiting for them to dry, we began to work on our butterfly bodies. Using Sharpies, we drew little faces on the tops of the bamboo pins.
Here they are when done.
Next, Grae chose some pipe cleaners from our stash, we cut them in half, and bent them into little antennae shapes.
When we got back to our filters, they weren’t quite dry yet, so we took a blowdryer to them. 10 seconds each was all they needed.
To assemble the butterflies, we simply pinched them across the middle (Miss G did this job) and fanned the wings out nicely (my job).
Then Grae carefully selected a clothespin body and a set of sparkly antennae and we clipped everything together.
Here are are the two butterflies Miss G declared her favourites.
At the last minute, we decided to add magnets to the backs of the clothespins with hot glue (I also popped a little squeeze of glue into the tops of the clothespins too, just to hold everything together more permanently).
And here’s my proud little girl with her finished project.
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
