Science Sunday {Butterflies and Birds}

Spring has brought a fresh appreciation for God's flying creatures! We moved on from birds to insects a while ago but the girls have loved watching all the birds that have been visiting our yard.
Sorry, for the lack of postings lately but life is pretty busy these days and that is a good thing. I hate that I didn't post as much as I wanted on our caterpillar/butterfly study. We found all kinds of caterpillars and impostors (army worms anyone? YUCK!) and we've had fun catching butterflies and identifying them. Our butterflies emerged during Holy Week. We released them on Easter Sunday. What a beautiful picture of a new life in Christ!

This spring I've had great success with a pot of pansies on our front porch. One day last week I noticed they looked a little droopy and messy. We were in the middle of all the tornado activity a little over a week ago (so very, very thankful that our home and family was spared any of the loss that so many in our area experienced) so I attributed the messy look to high winds. When I went to water the flowers I found a bird's nest in the middle. I gently removed it. The next day there was another bird's nest. Again, I gently removed it. I'm not sure why really other than I was trying to save my pansies! The next day there wasn't a nest but there were 2 eggs laying in the little hole that had been burrowed. Saturday evening the momma bird hopped into the flower pot. I was excited to get a look at it and was able to identify it as a sparrow! I'm so excited!! I don't think my flowers are going to live. Today the eggs were covered with flowers the bird had pulled off the stems. I can't wait to see the babies though!

The Caterpillars are Growing!

Remember these tiny guys?

Look at them now! We've had them for five days. This is such a fun process to watch!

Yesterday we read Waiting for Wings and Bonjour, Butterfly. 

Today we spent more time learning about butterfly eggs, painted lady eggs in particular.

We read Arabella Miller's Tiny Caterpillar and read some from the DK book Butterflies and Moths and from Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. We learned the most however from the DK book. It was very interesting to learn how different butterflies lay their eggs.

I think our favorite was the Lackey moth who lays her eggs in a ring around a twig so that it looks like part of the plant. There are also pictures showing how the Owl butterfly larva grows within it's egg and then gnaws away and pulls itself from the egg. Since he is really hungry each caterpillar then eats it's own egg!

We're having so much fun exploring God's creation!

Butterfly Reading List

The great monarch butterfly chase
by Prior, R. W. N.
 
Explorer extraordinaire!
by O''Connor, Jane
 
Waiting for wings
by Ehlert, Lois.
 
The lamb and the butterfly
by Sundgaard, Arnold
 
Monarchs
by Lasky, Kathryn
 
From caterpillar to butterfly
by Heiligman, Deborah
 
Butterfly & moth
by Whalley, Paul Ernest Sutton
 
A butterfly grows
by Swinburne, Stephen R
 
Butterfly express
by Moncure, Jane Belk
 
Butterflies in the garden
by Lerner, Carol
 
Fancy Nancy bonjour, butterfly
by O''Connor, Jane
 
The butterfly alphabet
by Sandved, Kjell Bloch
 
Arabella Miller''s tiny caterpillar
by Jarrett, Clare
 
Butterfly story
by Hariton, Anca
 
DVDs
 
The Magic school bus. Bugs, bugs, bugs 
 
Reading Rainbow - Bugs

We Have Larvae

For the next several weeks we will be studying flying insects using Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day as a reference. We will be working our way through this study with another homeschooling family. You can meet Rose here.

Rose and I bought  grow your own butterfly kits from Insect Lore at Hobby Lobby a couple weeks ago. It took about a week for our larvae to arrive but they showed up in our mailbox last night. I was nervous about opening the box this morning. First, it was cold yesterday and I don't know how long they were in the mailbox. Second, it said open immediately but I wanted to wait for the girls to be awake so they could see it right away. Third, I was afraid of what was in there. I'm not a big fan of the creepy and the crawly.

I was pleasantly surprised, nothing too creepy. They were packaged upside down and I didn't see any movement at first but now all 5 baby caterpillars are crawling around. I'm excited to chart their growth progress over the next couple weeks!

In other news I finally bit the bullet and transplanted the rainbow plants. I hope I didn't kill them. They seem rather fragile.

Kennedy made this little flower pot at Bible study a couple weeks ago.

I have quite the collect of books waiting to be picked up from the library for our butterfly studies. I'll get a book list up soon.