A Caterpillar Named "Butterfly"

I became intrigued with the idea of hatching a butterfly when I learned a friend of mine has done this with her children and they loved it. She found her caterpillar in a milkweed patch. I am a nature/animal lover at heart, so I thought of doing this sometime maybe next year. I thought it was too late to find one this year, but we went to the park by our house and I saw milkweed all over. I started looking around and within a few minutes had found a nice, plump monarch caterpillar. He looked huge! I decided to keep day to day pictures as he changes from caterpillar to butterfly.

















9/23/10
Around 3:00pm
Found the caterpillar in the park in the wild grass area. This picture was taken while the caterpillar crawled on J's toy lizard. This was before I put him an empty water bottle I had in the car to transport him home.















9/23/10
Around 6:00pm same day.
Now in its new home (an old lunchables box). He seemed to want to be near the top of the container and after this picture, he actually moved to being upside down on the top of the cage. At this point, I asked J what he wanted to name him. After lots of ummm....ummm....he said Butterfly! I asked a couple times just to be sure he meant that as a name and he said yeah, call him Butterfly!















9/23/10
Around midnight same day.
Went to check our little guy to see if he ate any of his leaves or if he was still hanging out at the top of the cage and viola! Here he is in "pre-pupa" stage with his "cremaster" molded to the top and hanging in the J formation. (The cremaster is a black, hook-like piece that attaches the pupa to an item where they will hang until becoming a caterpillar).



























9/24/10
Between 12noon and 3pm
WOW! He moved into the chrysalis stage without us being able to witness it! Sorry these pictures aren't so great, but he's hanging there in his green cocoon. The most amazing thing is, if you get really close you can see a ring of these incredibly tiny gold-looking beads that form a ring around the top. It's amazing! Cocoon jewelry??? (From the research I did, it appears the function of these is not quite known but may have something to do with pigmentation or scaling of the eventual butterfly.)

Here's the story .... So we took him with us on our vacation up north and put him in the car about 12noon. By the time I checked on him around 3pm, he had already transformed into a green cocoon! So the chrysalis (cocoon) itself is actually clear, and what you see is the caterpillar inside but it is now called a pupa. From my research, it only takes them about 3 minutes to shed their skin and become a pupa so we would have had to watch him constantly. Then, once they shed their exoskeleton they are a yellowish color and it takes about 2 hours more to reach the hard, green cocoon stage. So we missed the yellow-turning-green stage too. (I can't complain though, because it's still exciting to learn all this.) Now we are waiting 10-14 days until our little friend should come out as a butterfly. We will get a warning sign as the cocoon will change color as the wings are formed. At that point, the cocoon will look very clear and you will see the orange/black color which is actually the wings. I'll post again about this when that is happening!!

Tot School (Before and During Vacation)

**J is 27 months old**

We started off our week with me teaching a little song with finger play called "Where is Thumbkin". This is one we used to do when I was a kid. Somehow it popped into my mind today. J really loved it. He kept saying, "Do again it?!" (do it again) so I'd do it over and over until he started joining me in singing and trying to use his fingers too.








































They had a 75% off sale at our grocery store and I got this book I Can Stencil My Numbers. They have numbers 1-10 with a little picture. I wasn't sure if J could do this one yet, but I started out and then he wanted to do it. I think he did pretty well. He enjoyed it too.















We had a play date with two other moms and the kids did a couple projects. One was ocean creature sponges that start out as a tiny little capsule that when put in water expand into a little sponge. J's was a lobster. We also did some Do-A-Dot painting of a dinosaur an elephant.

While making breakfast one morning, J wanted me to play our kids worship CD, Songs for Worship Volume 1. I hadn't played this in a while and it was nice to enjoy it again and see J enjoying it.





























J had a little book frenzy as I opened the cupboard with all our books and he "read" a bunch on his own. After he was done, I had to take a picture of them strewn all over floor. Then a picture once cleaned up ;)















We went to his play group called Pal Zone. We were excited to see my friend Eileen with her son Jackson. During circle time, Birch (the teacher) read a gorilla book that also had many other animals in it. For the craft, the kids got to make any animal. Not really sure what J's animal is, but he had a really fun time making it. He did really well with showing me where he wanted something (feathers, eyes, shapes), I'd put the glue in that spot and then he'd press it on.









































J found a box I had sitting off from our living room. In it was an elephant slide that goes with his little summer wading pool, but we never used it. I got the idea to blow it up and let J play with it inside. He had a ball! He would slide down it and then his spider man would slide down. He also had his dinosaurs and elephant figures walk through the little tunnel under the slide. We got out all of his balls and rolled them down the slide too. We'll have to do this one again!















We spent some time at the park on one of the beautiful afternoons we had. Here's J enjoying the swings. I did my good deed of the day with fixing the two adult swings. Someone had twisted them around the top of the swing set so they were stuck. I pulled over a picnic table and stood on top. Using a long stick, after several tries and lots of arm work I got the swings unraveled and then mommy got to swing too!




























There is a lot of milkweed there (at the park) so I was looking around and sure enough I found a nice, large monarch caterpillar! A friend of mine had raised one with her children and I thought this was a great idea so J and I took him home. I put him in an empty water bottle to take him home, then I used an old lunchables container. Here he is crawling on the top of the container and then below it is when he surprised us by starting to curl up into his pre-cocoon position. I am doing a separate blog entry about this so I'll post that soon.

BOOKS
Peek a Boo Elmo
Old McDonald Had a Farm
Grandma

VIDEOS
We watched part of a movie called Misty. This is based on a book I read as a child called Misty of Chincoteague. Chincoteague is an island in Virginia where wild ponies live and every year they have the herd swim into the town and auction off some of the foals. It was fun reminiscing while I saw this movie, as I loved the book as a child.

We watched the movie Stellaluna and it had the words from the book following right along on the screen. J loves this story yet this time he actually got sad because the owl chases Stellaluna's mom but he didn't want me to turn it off.

We watched some of the Leapfrog Storybook Factory.

We did a little from Sesame Street's 123 Count with Ernie.

We found the DVD Old Bear and Friends which had the story called Hoot. This is a book we read from the library. Hoot is a story about little stuffed animals who find a little owl friend. I think J loved seeing it even more on DVD. It is a sweet little story.

VACATION

These are some pictures from our trip up to the North Woods of Wisconsin. As I type, I'm sitting in a little restaurant called Sunrise Cafe that has WiFi. We have a cozy little cabin in the woods off a lake called St. Germain. Our friend Dave (my husband's old roommate of 11 years) traveled with us too.

For more fun with Tot School ideas, visit 1+1+1=1



Also, here's another Tot linky I joined that is fun to visit.