Caterpillar to Butterfly Metamorphosis Craft

We really loved this craft, shown here (with more instructions in this video. I can't stop thinking about the cute way she calls them "paddle-pop"[? or pad-a-pop?] sticks. Adorable.). There are actually several really cute caterpillar and butterfly crafts on this page, but this one was my favorite because of the way it transforms from caterpillar to butterfly. And we used Sharpie, naturally, instead of painting, because whenever it is possible to make something easier and less messy, I try to do so. :)

We ran out of popsicle sticks after four kids, so for the younger two (who naturally couldn't BEAR to be left out of the craft-making), I improvised with an accordion-folded piece of paper. It worked fine and they were so happy to have their own little caterpillar/butterflies to play with! (Besides the real ones, of course!)

Goldie took it all very seriously.

These girls LOVED telling the story of their caterpillars' life cycles as they played with these.

Malachi's nice fat rainbow caterpillar.

Ky added his own twist by drawing a chysalis on the back of the popsicle sticks, so that you could fold the sides in and let the caterpillar metamorphose inside before changing into a butterfly. Everyone else liked that and copied it on their crafts too. (And Malachi was very pleased with himself for having the caterpillar leave that "Sorry, be in the next picture" sign on the "door" of his chysalis. Ha!)

And here is Malachi's butterfly. So cute!

Seb spent such a long time making his Monarch butterfly beautiful and accurate that he didn't want to spoil the effect by gluing fwuffballs down the thorax (much as he likes fwuffballs).

And here are all the caterpillars…

transformed to beautiful butterflies!

Butterfly Life Cycle Collage

Inspired by these lovely insect collages, we went on a little nature walk and gathered materials, then made these Butterfly Life Cycle collages with what we found. As you can see they weren't ideal for laying flat and putting in binders, but they were still fun to make. :)

For more on the life cycles of insects, and photographs of the different stages, see this post. (And for another craft, see here.)

Junie really loved this project. She made several different pictures. Here are two of them.

Abe's "Orange Morpho."

Malachi's cute little egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly.

Raising butterflies from a kit

As soon as I started planning this Insect Unit, I thought, "We have got to order one of those caterpillar metamorphosis kits again!" We had done it awhile ago and LOVED it. I asked the children if they remembered and was astounded to realize that it was NINE YEARS AGO! And only Abe really had memories of it!

It is a really fun thing to do. You order the caterpillars and they come in a little cup, and grow at an incredible rate. The cup has all the food they need, so all you do is watch them as they get huge, and then turn into chrysalises, and then emerge as beautiful Painted Lady butterflies!

Speaking of chrysalises (or chrysalids, as we learned is an alternate plural form…doesn't it seem like it ought to be "chysali"?)—maybe you have read Eric Carle's explanation of why HIS hungry caterpillar makes a cocoon instead of turning into a chrysalis? It's charming. And we were very interested to find out the difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis. A cocoon is like a little web that the caterpillar spins around itself, which then hardens to protect the changing caterpillar inside. And a chrysalis IS actually the caterpillar…changed into a different state (the pupa) and with a hardened outer skin. Most butterflies form a chrysalis and most moths spin cocoons. You can read more about that here, among other places.

Cute little caterpillars on successive days.

They attach themselves to the top of the cup with a little silk pad. You can see how at first they still look like caterpillars. Then they molt one last time, and suddenly…they are chrysalises!

Once they have hardened for a couple days, you can put them upright in this little holder. And what is strange…they seem like just husks, but they are still kind of…alive. And if they get bumped or startled they will start to wiggle and shake themselves around! It is the weirdest thing to see. We laughed and laughed! Here is a little video:

They were startled because one butterfly had emerged and bumped the other chysalises on his way out! :)

Three butterflies have emerged. You can see their empty chrysalises. Two to go!

When the butterflies were all out, we kept them in their little habitat for a few days, and then finally, reluctantly, let them go. We had grown to love them in that time. :) The children loved to put their hands into the habitat and let the butterflies land there and walk around with their tickly little feet. Sometimes a butterfly would put out its proboscis and taste someone's finger, to our great delight!

Before we let the butterflies go, though, we had caught a couple Monarch butterflies. We thought they were so beautiful we wanted to keep them and watch them for awhile, so we put them in the habitat with the Painted Ladies. We don't know how all the butterflies felt about that, but they didn't seem to bother each other too much, anyway. It was so fun to watch them flying around and sipping nectar! We finally forced ourselves to put one of the Monarchs in the killing jar for our collection (we were so sad! But we assured it that it would live on in our hearts forever!), and then we let the other one free with the Painted Ladies. But not before Junie did lots of collegial flitting about with her own Monarch wings!

Our butterflies flapped around us saying "thank you" and "goodbye" for awhile before flying away. We were sorry to see them go, but happy that they got to go out into the beautiful world at last!

Bird Nest activities

This was one of the children's favorite days, I think. There are a lot of resources on building models of birds nests using various things. If it had been Spring, we might have attempted building with some actual nest materials (twigs, grasses, etc.) but there was no way we were venturing out in 3-degree weather to hunt for them. So, I decided we'd build life-sized nests using things around the house. Two of the children got to be the parents and two got to be the babies, and they took turns building the main types of nests: cup, pendulum, spherical, platform, and cavity. (There is lots of information about nests and a worksheet about the types, here.) I let them use anything they could find around the house (within reason). Once the nest was built, I let the parents feed their babies by dropping a chocolate chip into their open beak. You would have thought this was the best idea EVER. The children begged to build nests every day for the rest of the unit. :)

Hungry birdies---cup nest

Spherical nest

Pendulum nest

Platform nest

(What the platform nest looked like underneath---very accurate)

Cavity nest

There are tons of cool videos of birds building nests. Here are a bunch we enjoyed:

Robins with their babies

Time lapse of a nest being built

Hummingbird nest (so tiny!)

This one was our favorite---SO amazing!---the weaver bird

For lunch that day, we had these "eggs in a nest" (Fried eggs inside toast)---I made the cut-out insides into little birdies. And I NEVER do cute things with our food, so the children thought it was very special. :)

And Sebby (on his own) made this sweet little nest---the mama and the baby robin come out of their pockets, so the mama can swoop down and feed the baby. So cute!