Metamorphosis

Several weeks ago, Asher's class studied the children's author Eric Carle.  One of Asher's fave books from Eric Carle is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Of course they learned about the life cycle of butterflies, which he also found interesting.
As I have mentioned before, we are currently using a reward system for the bigs for when they wake up at night.  We will stretch them further and further between rewards as we go along, until they are sleeping perfectly haha.  It's more fun than just yelling "GET BACK IN BED GO TO SLEEP."
SO!  Asher's choice of reward was real caterpillars, so we could watch them turn into butterflies.  I had done this before with my VPK class, so I knew what to expect, and what company to use!  It was a seamless process, and really cool to watch.  The entire metamorphosis took about 3 weeks to complete.  It took a week of caterpillars growing before they spun the chrysalises, then a week in the chrysalises before they hatched, then almost another week before we released them.  I think we were all a little sad to see them fly off, but since they only live for 2 to 4 weeks anyways, we needed to let them go do their thing.
Hope was SUPER into them as well, and butterfly became her favorite word for awhile.  I'm going to post the pics in chronological order, and then put videos at the end!  I'm just uploading the entire 6.5 minute go pro video of our release on Wednesday because I'm too lazy at the moment to edit it, but it is kind of neat to see the kids holding the butterflies before they fly off!  It was Hannah's wish to hold one, and her wish came true three times!  Asher held one, and it liked him a lot and stayed on him for quite awhile!
It was really cool and I'd definitely do it again!

Night One April 26th

Few days later- they just stay in the sealed up and eat the food provided at the bottom of the cup.  They grew very quickly! 

After they are done eating, they crawl to the top of the lid and hang in a J shape, then harden into the chrysalis.  Kinda gross but cool.

Then, two Fridays ago, I was at home and I peeked in and ...there was a butterfly!!!  I was surprised how excited I got haha, but it was really neat!  Over the course of the rest of the day 6 more came out of their chrysalises, and the kids were very excited to see them when they came back from school. The next day the remaining 3 joined us, and we watched them flutter around their enclosure until Wednesday.  I just got the feeling they needed some more space to roam!  So we had a little release party before school started.  We were all a bit sad, but it was time.  Hopefully I didn't send them to their deaths, as their were massive storms later that morning and afternoon!  Check out the pics and videos of the release!

 Asher transferred his butterfly to Hannah, which was sweet to see:)

See the butterfly near her elbow?!