Homeschooling - Butterfly Garden

I have a confession...

I love getting my kids educational items:

craft kits

science kits (of all kinds)

art kits

The problem is...finding the time to do them!

I always have better things to do.

I hate the way that sounds,

but no matter how many times they ask me to do them

there is something else that gets my attention:

laundry

dishes

dinner

all of these things can wait,

but they don't.

My kids wait...

but at the same time,

I am with them 24/7

I cannot be "with" them every second.

Last Christmas,

actually it may have been Christmas of 2011

ack!

no way!?!

thankfully I can't remember

so just for my sake,

we are going to say 

LAST Christmas

as in 

2012...

Either Jackson or the boys

received a 

Butterfly Garden

You had to send off and purchase the larvae.

I was hoping to incorporate it into a butterfly unit,

so I seriously intentionally waited

and 

hoped that we could do a whole science unit

on it.

Never happened...

I could just never get my act together

and gather the materials

(meaning I didn't take 10 minutes to sit down

and find something on the internet that 

someone else had already done

and incorporate it)

BUT - 

I was hoping we would 

encounter it in our science books.

Sigh...

regardless,

I just never did it.

It didn't happen.

I finally got tired of telling 

my sweet child

"No, not right now"

and just ordered the caterpillars!

And I didn't tell him!

Here is how they looked when they arrived:

Day 1 - Oct 8, 2013

We put them on a shelf in our school room

and waited for them to attach themselves

to the top of the container

in their chrysalis.

 Day 6 - Oct 13, 2013

Once we noticed they were attached,

 We carefully transferred them,

 and the paper on the top of the cup that they had attached to,

to their habitat.

We put them back on a shelf,

and waited again...

Day 11 - Oct 18, 2013

We checked on them every day,

sometimes multiple times a day...

then finally on Day 11,

we saw our first butterfly had emerged!!

The excitement over these things emerging

was pretty surprising!

The rest of them emerged over the next few days.

We fed and kept them for a few days.

Almost a week.

Then after reading up,

I decided I didn't want to raise

butterflies for a living,

and I didn't want them dying

and the kids having issues with that.

So we decided to release them

when they were about a week old.

The kids really enjoyed that part,

and swore they wanted to stay with us,

since they weren't leaving.

But eventually they flew off into the 

great wide openness.

Then they found another pet

and tried to talk me into keeping it.

NOPE!!!