Out Popped A Beautiful Butterfly!

"Wow," said Sophia, "it is beautiful." Our class was very fortunate to be able to witness the emergence of a Monarch butterfly from its chrysalis today. We have had a mini caterpillar garden in our classroom for several weeks. Our Science teacher brought in some milkweed plants with butterfly eggs on them. The children have seen the eggs turn into tiny caterpillars and then bigger and bigger caterpillars -- and eat up all of the milkweed plants. They have seen the daily growth of these insects and have been able to talk about all the changes they have seen in them everyday. They noticed that when the caterpillar slowed down its eating, it started to look for a place to spin its silk button. It then formed into a J-shape. Mrs. Stevens (the Science teacher) put a net around the plant and hung it from the ceiling. Then the caterpillar found its way up the net and hung from the top. In about a day or two, it formed a beautiful green chrysalis and stayed like that for a week or so. Today, we noticed that the green chrysalis was brown. This meant that the butterfly would soon come out...and it did!! We have three more chrysalis hanging in our net and by early next week we should be releasing the rest of the butterflies into our butterfly garden in front of the school. Eric Carle would be so proud!!!