Last week for an activity I gave the girls buckets and shovels and told them to look for bugs…mostly to give me some free time, but they loved it. They found mostly beetles, but loved finding any kind of bug. With Klai’s excitement she wanted to show her class, and her teacher was nice enough to let her bring her bugs to show the class. A day or so after showing her class, her teacher got some caterpillars for the class to watch and helped us retrieve some also. The girls loved looking at the caterpillar. We had plenty of crawling space for the caterpillar and leaves to eat, but after a few days it died. So yesterday we went a retrieved another caterpillar and this time put a net over the bowl to make sure that nothing would eat our friend. We named this friend Rani the caterpillar and we can’t wait for it to turn into a caterpillar.
Today Klai asked, “Has it made a coconut yet?”
“You mean a cacoon? No not yet, but soon it will.”
I thought that was too cute.
wow! you have monarch butterflies over there! i have always wanted to catch one of those! oh, and did you know they only eat milkweed? i didn’t know you grew that over there either.
i hope it makes a crysallis for you and you can document the entire thing!
http://home.wi.rr.com/monarchraising/page8.htm
that is a good site for raising a monarch caterpillar.
keep me posted!
thanks shand, I was looking for info on raising my catepillar. yeah we took only the leaves from where we got him, and this 2nd bug has eaten so much already. I think he’s ready for his “coconut”
i am glad you saved the ‘coconut’ comment. that will be priceless in the future – and it figures that shand would know exactly what kind of butterfly, where to find info and be all excited about it. she’s been a bug lover since early chidhood!
i need to start enjoying catching bugs like you all so that my kids aren’t deprived:D not so much a bug fan – caterpillars are great – beetles are not!
I don’t touch the bugs, I make Klai do it!! And we didn’t start playing with bugs till this year, so Bren you have plenty of time to get used to them.
If that little critter turns into a coconut, I’ll buy it from you for a thousand bangers.