Metamorphosis

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over,

it became a butterfly.

  We decided a fun summer activity would be getting a butterfly habitat and watching our caterpillars transform into butterflies!  The girls have loved watching every minute of it and I have to admit so have I!  I wish I would have gotten better pictures of the first day we got our caterpillars in the mail, they were so tiny!!!  

 Seriously wish I would have gotten better picture!

3-4 days in

1 week in

1 1/2 weeks in

 Forming their chrysalis

The kids were a bit concerned
that the caterpillars were not forming their chrysalis at the same time

Transferring them to their habitat

  The kids were so EXCITED when we woke up the one morning to a single butterfly!!!  So the rest of the day we pretty much watched our habitat so we could watch the other 7 come out!!!  It was so cool to watch the chrysalis darken and then slowly the butterfly emerges out of it.  The kids were pretty fascinated that it took a bit for the butterflies to spread their wings out and dry.

  The kids had a hard time deciding when to let the butterflies out.  They loved watching them but also wanted them to enjoy our flower bed.  Two of the butterflies started fluttering right when we walked outside and the second Zach opened the habitat they were off!!!

 Six of our butterflies were mating, we googled and discovered they mate for 3-17 hours!!!!  So we decided we would wait and try again the next night!

 Release day number 2

Yes the butterfly is blurry but it's still cool 

 One of our butterflies had a bad wing
so we made sure to release her in a safer spot of the flower bed

  We enjoyed watching our butterflies metamorphosis even more than we imagined we would!  It was such a fun couple weeks watching them transform.  We will definitely be doing this again!