The Butterfly Project Day 10

All the butterflies are now in the chrysalis stage! Sunday morning we found the first chrysalis, and by late afternoon yesterday, all five had changed. I had thought it must be the kind of transformation that is so slow you can' really see it happening, because three of them were found in the morning after having checked on the caterpillars the night before.
The last two were hanging upside down, much like the ones in the previous picture I posted. I checked them before leaving the house at 3:30pm yesterday and couldn't tell they had changed at all. When we got home at 6:00pm they were complete chrysalises.

We transferred them very carefully into the butterfly garden , pinning the paper disk they were attached to, to the netting . To my disgust, when I lifted the paper disc from the top of the cup, along with the chrysalises came the silky webbing they had been spinning all week AND the frass (known around here as caterpillar poop) that was tangled up in the webbing. We were afraid to try to remove the yucky stuff, as this is supposed to be the most delicate stage for the butterfly. I thought we weren't going to have to look at that stuff any more.

Oh well, they say homeschooling isn't for the faint of heart

Here's another rather gross but interesting fact we learned. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar dissolves into a liquid "soup of living cells" before reforming into a butterfly. It's like it starts all over from scratch.

Other learning-related stuff:

We observed the chrysalises shaking when we moved them - this is a natural defense against predators.

We also identified the spiracles (breathing holes) on the chrysalis.

I found a Painted Lady Butterfly Life Cycle coloring page on http://www.enchantedlearning.com/ and printed it off for the girls. Of course, Peanut wanted to know if she HAD to use the colors suggested on the page . I told her she had to follow the instructions because, since we were learning about this particular species, it should look like a real Painted Lady butterfly, but that when she was finished I would print her another
to color however she wanted.

While they were coloring we talked about the different stages - larva, pupa, chrysalis, adult butterfly.

The rest of our experience has involved a lot of 'oohing' and 'aahing', with assorted exclamatory whispers like "Cool!" and "Wow!" (For some reason we think we have to whisper when we're observing them up close).

And now we wait. According to the instructions, we should have butterflies by Sunday or Monday.