Butterflies

My Dad and Step Mom sent Joshua a fun b-day package that included a butterfly habitat.  If you missed that post you can read it here. 
 
We spent the last two weeks watching our little caterpillars crawl around, make their cocoons, checking up on them to see if were doing anything exciting and then finally watching them turn into butterflies. 
 
We watched them fly around in their habitat for a few days, picked flowers to put their sugar water on to feed them, and we read books about the process. 
 
Checking out the first butterfly that emerged...
 

 

 

Putting in his freshly picked flowers.

 

Showing his neighbor friend his butterflies.

 

Getting ready to release our butterflies.  Before we released them I gave him a pep talk about how they were going to fly away when we opened the top.  They were going to be all gone and we will wave bye-bye to them and not cry.  I kept reminding him that they were going to fly away and he said, "go catch them."  He did great!  He loved watching them fly out one by one and waved to them.  

 

 

I tried letting him hold one but it flew away.  Then he put his hand in and was able to touch another butterfly before it quickly flew out.  He thought it was pretty funny how fast they reacted.  When we first unzipped their habitat they didn't fly out.  He was ordering them to "COME OUT!" 

 

It took this one a while to fly away.  He landed in our rocks and stayed for a while. 

 

Saying bye to our butterflies. 

 

The day we picked flowers for our butterflies he also picked me a flower.  I went ahead and put it in with the butterflies.  It was a yellow one and the ones we picked for the butterflies were white.  As we were releasing the butterflies he reached in and grabbed the shriveled up yellow flower and said with such excitement, "Mommy's flower!"  and gave it to me.  AWE! 



 

Joshua is such a thinker so it was so fun watching him during this whole process.  You could see the wheels turning as he studied his little pets. 

 

Thank you so much Grandma and Grandpa!