Science Exhibit

Can you find the "tiny and very hungry caterpillar"?
(Hint: it is on the left of the leaf just below the hole.)
We captured a few and measured them almost every day. The smallest one was 4mm when we started. It was truly amazing how much they would eat and how quickly they grew!

This picture was a little too much for Mike (there are at least 8 caterpillars crawling on her). He thinks caterpillars are gross so I guess it's a good thing I stay home with the girls. (At least for this science project.)

These are medium size caterpillars.

I thought I had a better picture of this stage-sorry. After about two weeks, the caterpillar turns kind of greenish and starts looking for a place to attach. Then in hangs in a J shape for about 24hrs before shedding its skin and going into its chrysalis. A process we've witnessed a few times. It is truly amazing to watch! And happens all in about 3 minutes.

Educating the neighbor kids.

The day before the chrysalis hatches, it turns clear so you can see the wings. My camera doesn't really do close-ups. I was trying to be able to see the wings, but the camera didn't really cooperate. Then just a few hours before it hatches it looks very black.

We happened to catch this one at the exact right time. We knew it was going to be soon and would check it every 15 mins or so and caught it just in time. If you look closely, you can see the chrysalis has cracked open on the right side.

Sorry about the sideways video-I don't know how to change it and don't want to take the time to figure it out.

3-4 minutes after hatching- the girls thought it was just going to be a small butterfly. :)

6-7 minutes after hatching (this was a different one, but I for some reason didn't get the other one at this phase as the wings are pulling down, getting more straight and drying.)

It's a BOY!
We learned (thank you, google!) that boy butterflies have two dots on the lower wings and the girl ones don't. My girls enjoy knowing this fact and like to classify any butterfly that holds still long enough to tell.

Rescue Mission Successful!
This chrysalis got knocked off the wall and we were worried it wouldn't survive. After a little bit of research, I made my best attempt to rescue it by tying it back up and it worked. The girls were so excited the morning we saw that it had hatched.


It has been fun to see the girls' excitement watching the butterflies. (And I must admit-I enjoy it too. So fascinating!) In many of these pictures, they are still in their jammies because they would go outside to check the night's happenings as soon as they got up.

Bryn calls the caterpillars "calolo" and butterflies "buh-lie". Whenever we talk about either one she holds out her hands and says "hold doh". But then she never actually wants to hold it when we try. Silly girl!

Cute Kenna and a GIRL butterfly