Butterfly Observations.

Sunday 9th February 2014

When Miss Personality and I sat down and discussed what she would like to learn about, she said butterflies.

27th December 2013

So we started off this unit study by buying some swan plants as mum knew this would be the best way to attract the monarch butterfly.

8th January 2014

             

         

Tara went out to check the swan plant and discovered we had 6 teeny tiny caterpillars, that had only just hatched out of their egg.

14th January 2014

                 

Our swan plants are planted in a large pot outside. We noticed when we went to check on our caterpillars, only 3 were left. So mum decided to bring the swan plants inside, to increase the chances of the remaining caterpillars surving.

21st January 2014

                        

While observing the remaining caterpillars Miss Personality and I noticed that some of them had shed/ molted. When they had molted their skin, they ate it. Which probably sounds gross, but was really interesting to observe. These caterpillars do this about 5 times between first hatching out of their eggs, and when they change into a chrysalis.

26th January 2014

                           

Miss Personality has developed a routine of inspecting the caterpillars every morning when she gets up. She discovered that one of the caterpillars had curled up and over the next 24 - 48 hours it changed into a chrysalis. At first the chrysalis was bumpy, then slowly smoothed out.

27th January 2014

             

                                                                       

We spotted another one had changed, and this time we got to see what the skin looked like after it was shed.

Once all of the caterpillars had transformed into chrysalis's, mum moved the pot back outside.
Over the next few days we noticed more eggs getting laid on the swan plant. Mum chose to remove them, so that the swan plant could grow new leaves, as it was looking a bit bear, after these 3 caterpillars had been feasting on it.

5th February 2014

                            
 

Noticed some colours and shapes appearing on the chrysalis shell.

9th February 2014

                                               

One chrysalis has turned transparent, and you can clearly see the colours of the monarch butterfly inside. One of the other chrysalis have some colours appearing, but the shell has a lot of green still in it.

                                            

Two hours later the butterfly had emerged. We watched it slowly stretch out it wings and move around till it was ready to fly off.

The other chrysalis has got heaps darker and looks like it will come out soon too.


Most of these photos were taken by Miss Personality on mum's iphone.