Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Butterflies Galore in Room 11
Our story a few weeks ago was a beautiful piece by Eve Bunting, The Butterfly House. It is a story of a young girl who saves a larva from a bird and how her grandfather teaches her how to care for it. One of the best things I do all year is to buy Painted Lady Butterfly larvae for my students. We purchase it from a company in Wasco called Insect Lore. They provide food for these creatures that are a sometimes less than a centimeter long. As the students know, they eat and grow, eat and grow, and eat and grow more. It is wonderful to see their excitement grow each day as they witness the transformation and life cycle. Last Thursday we returned to the room from lunch and their were two butterflies, hatched from their chrysalis. There went the rest of the day! We had eight by the day's end on Friday only to return Monday to find 23! Oh, my!!! We released them today, fearing rain tomorrow. What a glorious experience for us all. I know this has nothing to do with my project, however there has been lots of reading and writing about this experience. Additionally, it's just too fun and I had to share. Thanks!
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2 comments:
That is really cool...I can't believe you had so many butterflies...and you know what the rest of your day wasn't wasted at all, it was spend learning from experience...nothing wrong with that. Thank you for sharing, it made me smile. I bet your kids will talk about that for a long time to come. =)
Painted Ladies are the only type of butterflies we can release in Yosemite National Park, because they are native. One year the native painted ladies had such a huge hatch in my town that you could stand in clouds of them if you went to an area of town where puddles naturally collect. It was magical. I'm glad you're students are getting to experience some butterfly magic of their own.
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