Butterflies!

Three days before Cora's birthday, her early birthday present came in the mail.... 5 caterpillars! We watched them eat and eat and eat for about 8 days, they doubled in size.

Then we watched them build their cocoons. One didn't survive (the company guarantees that 3 will turn to butterflies), but the other four hung from the top of the jar and we watched them spin and spin.

About 8 days later, we got butterflies! We were lucky and saw one of them come out from start to finish. We fed them orange slices, sugar water, and watched their long tongues stick out to drink up.

Five days later (before we went out of town for the weekend), we let them go. One stayed on a neighbor's roof for a while and one stayed on the grass for a few minutes, but then they were off to explore.

Now whenever Cora sees a butterfly, she thinks it might be one of ours :). This was a great activity-- they girls loved having a 'pet', it was fun and interesting to see the butterfly life cycle close-up, and we can order more caterpillars to use with the same butterfly cage another time.