Caterpillars and Butterflies

*Today's post is brought to you by the students in our class, who chose the pictures and dictated the text. Miss Russell added her observations and some quotes under the photos.*

We got some caterpillars in cups from the butterfly farm.

We wondered what was the yellow stuff. Some of it is poo! But most was food the farmer made.

The children were fascinated by the caterpillar waste products! They were amazed I was letting them say pee and poo, so we talked about how using bathroom words is ok as as part of science. This is part of building self-regulation - different rules for different situations.

 Everybody was looking at them in the cups. They were climbing up the sides. They lived in the cups so they wouldn't go everywhere and get squished.

 He got his skin off. The blacks stuff is his old skin. He molted. He also pooped on the top of the lid.

"Maybe we should go back to the farm and get the first leaf he was born on."

 When they molt it's because they want to get bigger so they can go into a chrysalis. The caterpillar is getting bigger. It can walk on us now. When it was walking on Cameron Hu, it slipped off his hand! But the caterpillar was ok, he was tough.

Ayden- Stop tickling me!

 Cameron Ha is looking at the caterpillar and writing a name of a caterpillar. He named it Walkie. (Cause he walks.)

 This is what Faith wrote. It's a sign that says "Don't touch. They are about to turn into chrysalises." Cause if you touched them when they were in their j-shapes, they could fall and they might die.

 This stuff is poop and skin and web. The web is practice for making butterfly glue.

Aidan:"Spider webs! A spider snuck in at night and made a web!"
Makayla: "No, the doors are locked at night."
Aidan: "But spiders can sneak under the door."

 These are caterpillars in the bug box. They are climbing on the ceiling. Caterpillars are good climbers!

These are the chrysalises. They are brown and golden. We were waiting for 9 days until they turned into a butterfly. They are probably sleeping in the chrysalis. Why do the caterpillars turn into butterflies?

Then on Monday we saw butterflies flying in the cage! 

Some were hanging upside down to make their wings air out and dry. You can see the shell of the chrysalis hanging down too. It's empty now.

They used their proboscis to drink juice out of the orange. A proboscis is thing that they drink with. It curls up when it doesn't want to drink but they stick it out to get juice.

This is a chrysalis that was shaken off in Mrs. T's class. We tried to help it, and it hatched even though it was on the ground.

It was time to let them go! They had a long time in the class. Why do they want go? Because they needed to look for nectar and put their eggs on the plants outside.

Lily opened the net for them to fly out. Before we let them go, we made wishes for the butterflies to carry for us.

Miss Russell is holding a butterfly. Then it took a deep breath and started to fly and fly away.

We are watching them fly away.

We looking at a chrysalis that didn't open. It died. Sometimes things die before they are born. It was very sad.

We learned all these things about butterflies and caterpillars:
-They drink with a straw called a proboscis.
-They spin webs to make the sticky stuff for them to stick to the top of cup.
-Caterpillars sometimes eat their poo. They and pee together.
-Caterpillars eat A LOT!
-Butterflies drink nectar flowers.
-Butterflies have to lay eggs to make more caterpillars.
-We learned how to be scientists who observe by smelling and watching and touching.
-We learned to write down our learning and thinking and questions.