Not Wordless Wednesday: Metamorphosis

A few weeks back Chipette found a caterpillar on the pecan tree in our back yard. She decided she wanted to keep it and see if we could watch it change into a butterfly. I really didn’t think this scheme would work, but I told her that she would have to change out the leaves every day with fresh ones from the pecan tree. Since we found him there we knew that he would like those.

Well, all I have to say is that the Eric Carle book, The Hungry Caterpillar, is true! That caterpillar would eat through two or three leaves every day. The kids had a lot of fun monitoring how much he had eaten.

After about ten days, we woke up to see that Butterbuns (that was what the girls named him) was covered in what looked like a spider web. I was afraid that a spider had been on one of the leaves we put in the jar and had killed Butterbuns while we slept, but just in case I told the girls to leave him alone and we’d see what happened. I had never seen a butterfly or moth cocoon, so I thought this web-looking thing might be one.

After ten more days, the leaves in the jar had turned brown, but the web with Butterbuns inside was still there. Until one morning as I walked into the dining room, I noticed that there was now a white moth in Butterbuns’ jar. We had done it! Our little caterpillar had turned into a moth right underneath our noses!

Remembering a science lesson that won’t soon be forgotten in the tree house,

Chelli