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Every year the
children have been so interested in watching nature. We started
with observing chicks, ducks and geese hatch and the children
were amazed at the whole process. They saw the chicks work
their way out of the egg and were just awe struck. To
build on their interest and curiosity I ordered caterpillars
from a company in Beaumont. The larvae came with food and
individual containers. The children watched as the
caterpillars eat, eat and eat and grow, grow and grow. It
takes about a week for the caterpillars to grow big enough to
form their chrysalis.
During the waiting
stage of watching the caterpillars grow and for the children to
have a hands on experience, I ask the children to paint a
cardboard egg carton. Their egg cartons are 3 sections
long, representing the 3 body parts of an insect. The
children paint their egg carton to be the larvae stage of the
life cycle. I place them on the bulletin board with the
heading, "Watch our caterpillars grow!"
When the live
caterpillars are ready, they crawl to the top of their container
and hang down as they spin a silk thread to hold them up to the
top of their container. They then turn into a
chrysalis. When their chrysalis hardens I take them out of
their container and put them in a butterfly garden net, being
careful not to disturb the chrysalis. (you can also use an
aquarium or another large container.)
Once the live
caterpillars make their chrysalis, we wrap tissue paper around
our cardboard caterpillars to represent a chrysalis. I
then hang them upside down from the bulletin board.
The day our
caterpillars formed their chrysalis we started to tally how many
days it would take for the butterflies to emerge from the
chrysalis. In some of the books we read the times varied
from 1 week to 2 weeks to even a month. We counted how
many days it took our butterflies and the first one emerged 6
days after it had formed its chrysalis.
Here you can see
the butterfly open its wings to help it out of the
chrysalis. Once they come out their wings are wet and
crumpled. It takes a couple of hours for their wings to
dry.
The children were
so excited when they saw it only took 6 days. They were
able to see the caterpillars grow, form their chrysalis and
emerge a butterfly.
Of course once the
butterflies emerged from their chrysalis our cardboard ones did
too! We made wings by folding a piece of white paper,
opening it up and putting drops of paint down the center.
The children then folded it back and squished the paint from the
center out to the ends, representing the butterflies
wings. The wings were symmetrical like a real butterfly's
wings. The wings were then stapled to the egg carton and
our butterflies were complete! Not only were the children
witnessing the life cycle of a real butterfly, but they had a
hands on experience as well, to internalize it.
To show the
children the symmetry of a butterfly's wings we looked through
books and I had a mural of butterfly pictures on a bulletin
board.
Here are their
beautiful butterflies.
Finally, after we
observed the butterflies for a couple of days we thought we
should let the butterflies go to exercise their wings. We
went out to a place with nice flowers and let them go.
Once the butterflies were gone we said a few prayers for them,
the children asked God to protect our butterflies and to watch
over them.
Submitted by Michelle
Bezubiak at St. Monica School
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