Baby & Butterflies

Little Man is so busy these days. He is practicing his standing and walking, and investigating everything he can get his hands on. His new favorite activity is washing his hands, by himself, at our playroom sink. He gets himself up there and yells until someone turns the water on. We are trying to teach him the word, "on" so he doesn't have to yell to us, he is getting better at least trying to say it... how fast he is growing.


Another recent activity that has peaked his interest, is the plastic container cabinet and the pots and pans. The noise of the pots and pans can be deafening, but man he loves to bang them, look at them, put one inside the other, and crash the lids. I remember the look on my little ones face when he first made that crashing noise with the metal lids... it was such a glorious and surprised look. Then to be able to recreate the noise (without being told no) was such a success for them. Thankfully, the other kids were able to distract him from being noisy for to long, I didn't have to take anything away or tell him no, a win - win for us all!!

This year was our first year getting a butterfly house at the store and ordering caterpillars from an online store. Last year we found a caterpillar in the yard and but him in a bug house and he actually cocooned and came out a beautiful moth. I can't find my post about it, but I know it's here somewhere :)

Anyway, we received our caterpillar's and watched as they fed on the food that was sent with them, then watched as they made cocoons (chrysalis), and then put them in the nifty butterfly house we purchased. It seemed like forever watching those cocoons hanging there, until finally, one day....

Yeah!!! All 5 of the caterpillars successfully made their chrysalis and successfully hatched into beautiful Painted Lady Butterflies. How exciting!!! We have been watching them for about 5 days now and we think today is the day to release them so they can spend the rest of their lives in the freedom of the yard. I hope they enjoy it.

Little Miss M's mom gave us a wonderful idea about an art activity depicting the life cycle of a caterpillar. So, we completed that today too. It was a little to teacher directed for my little ones, but the big kids really enjoyed it and loved talking about each step the caterpillar took. We didn't get to see the eggs of the caterpillar, but we read some wonderful books, and looked up some information on the Internet. The preschoolers were wonderfully impressed that our butterflies started out as eggs and ended up as what we have today.

The end product came out great, and the kids were very proud of their work. The preschooler need to wait until it dries and then they will write, on their own, the different stages like I did for the toddlers. Thanks Miss Dana!! We loved our project!!!