Our One Room Schoolhouse: Raising Painted Lady Butterflies

Here are the stages of a Painted Lady Butterfly. Thanks to Jackson's Auntie Angel we got 5 little caterpillars in the mail and watched them eat and eat inside their little clear cup, each day doubling in size. About 8 days later they climb to the top of the container and attach themselves there upside down. Within hours they have morphed into Chrysalides, with a hardened outer protective layer that they build around themselves. During this period they have a definite iridescent shimmer to them-very pretty for sure.

After all five of the caterpillars have morphed to chrysalides and affixed themselves to the paper layer on the top of the cup, you are to remove the layer and pin it to the inside of a mesh cadge that comes with the butterfly kit. Just about 7 days later they begin to emerge from the skin-like shells. After that we release them to the wild, just in time too because our kitties were serious about hunting them and tried over and over to bite them through their mesh habitat indoors.

So those are the stages of the metamorphosis of a Painted Lady Butterfly- but do not fear, we did not release these without proper study of them which the boys loved every second of.

Just because now we know them, let me share some butterfly facts with you:

Did you know that they suck the nectar out of oranges?? That was fun to watch! Did you know that they taste with their feet? That they have 4 wings? 10,000 eyes?? That she breathes through her abdomen? That they only live for 2-4 weeks and that in that time a single butterfly could travel 1,000 miles??

For those of you not fluent in kidwrit the message above says  "Ukweryoom" (Aquarium) with a line to "Kadupilrs" (caterpillars) and another to their trapped and on exhibit for a very limited time "Flise" (Flies). I noticed that there are fingerprints on my lens, but I just couldn't resist showing this pic- it was way too cute.

Then came time for release of these little new-found winged friends.

Look at those kids faces!! I can only say that if I were the butterflies, I would fly and fly away very fast for fear of my life!

They are beautiful, the Painted Ladies are so pretty. I have more pictures of post release, on flowers and flitering around the yard, but since this post is already very picture heavy I'll post those shots separately. I hope you enjoyed our butterfly metamorphosis journey- we sure did!!

Want to read our other recent homeschooling posts? Check out  Our One Room Schoolhouse Homeschooling Journey !

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