Bringing Spring Indoors

We’re bringing Spring inside because we have to, if we want to see signs of Spring any time soon!

Actually, I did see a very short dandelion yesterday - after a young girl had picked it while we were at a potluck. I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

It’s hard to remember not being bothered by the cold and the wind when I was young, but I love to see kids being able to enjoy playing outside even if I’m not enjoying being there watching them.

Before we went to the potluck, we stopped by another homeschooling family’s house to pick up our new butterfly kit. In a few weeks we are going to The Butterfly Pavilion, and somebody in our homeschooling association had a great idea to order kits and study the life cycle of a butterfly beforehand.

We plan to take photos of the larvae every day, as B. read that they double in size every day and we want to document that (and prove it to ourselves).

Here’s the photo from this morning, which we’re considering Day 1.

I took several photos but chose this one to share because it shows scale.

And they’ve already grown just since we picked them up less than 24 hours ago. That black one in the middle was the only black one yesterday, and now most of them are black. We haven’t done any reading about them yet, but apparently that’s something that happens as Painted Lady Butterflies grow.

If you look closely at the photo you’ll see little black dots. In reality, they look like parts of the caterpillars. B. was really concerned about this, thinking that they’d been hurt. I told him I think it’s their exoskeleton (we’ll have to see if there’s another word for that for caterpillars), since they’re growing already. There *are* more in there today than there were yesterday.

We really need to do some reading about it, though. Hope I know what I’m talking about.

I won’t post these photos every day, but will post an update with sequential photos.

Oh, by the way… we won’t have to do a thing with these guys (besides watch them) until they’ve all built their chrysalises! That stuff at the bottom of the cup is their food!!

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