There are so many things I want to teach my kids, I get excited chatting with my friends who homeschool as I learn about the curriculum they use or the different experiments they try. There is something so lovely about a family learning together, that inspires me. This summer we decided to take on a little family experiment; raising monarch butterflies.
There are a number of great resources online that I found very helpful, blogs with lots of information that I turned to. (...in the middle of the night when I woke up afraid I was killing the caterpillars.) We did lose a few caterpillars along the way, but I don't think it had much to do with anything I did.
A great resource book we found at the library is : How to Raise Monarch Butterflies by Carol Pasternak. This became our go to book if we had any questions about what was happening. It is a book written for kids to learn how to raise butterflies, the pictures are lovely showing each step of the butterflies life. Of course the library had a handful of other books we borrowed as well....that is the way we are!
We bought our caterpillars from Rose Franklin's online butterfly store. This is also where we bought our milkweed plants. (did you know monarch caterpillars ONLY eat milkweed)
We used this cage for our caterpillar and butterfly habitat, it worked great for our caterpillars.
We released 6 butterflies last weekend into the wilds of our neighborhood, wishing them luck in survival and migration. If you are interested in learning more about what is happening to the monarch population this blog has a few short fact lists. Also, many probably wonder why it is good to help save monarchs, here are a few reasons on this blog.
For our family this was an opportunity to engage in a project together, we all learned about the life stages of the butterfly and we got to see up close the beauty that our Creator made in designing this butterfly. There were some lovely life lessons that struck me as I watched the caterpillars live on pure instinct. And we all got to be a small part in helping these 6 caterpillars live to be adults. Crossing our fingers that they made it out of town and on their way to a warm tree in Mexico.