Monarch Caterpillar

Our friends the Mitchell's gave us a Monarch caterpillar to watch change into a butterfly. We got to see some amazing things. The second day we had our caterpillar he found his spot and hung upside down in the shape of a J. We knew he would soon shed his skin so we went to bed hoping he would wait until morning. Well in the morning he was still there hanging in his J. I went in to get Emma up and literally 3 minutes later we came out to find him almost completely our of his skin. It was cool to watch him wriggle out of the last little bit. I was amazed how much they wiggle.

After our caterpillar had become a chrysalis we started to notice little caterpillars all over in the jar. Apparently the leaves we put in the jar were covered in eggs. (see the first 3 pictures) So we carefully removed all of the babies over the next couple days I stopped counting at 10.

We waited so patiently for our butterfly to hatch but it never did. And eventually the chrysalis began to turn black like it was dieing. Just to be sure we gave it a few more days. We had to explain to the girls how sometimes things die and they were bummed. I really wanted to dissect the chrysalis' to see what was inside but I didn't want to traumatise my kiddos. I asked them if they wanted to see what was inside and they actually got really excited. So I carefully cut open the chrysalis. It was a little yucky since it was starting to decay but we were still able to see one of the butterflies wings. Even though we didn't get to see the butterfly hatch it was really exciting to watch the rest of the process.

Allison had fun drawing the life cycle of a butterfly.

This video is a little blurry but it shows the last bit of the caterpillar wriggling out of his skin.