May 4, 2008

The caterpillars - day 6





Today is our sixth day for having the butterfly larvae. The information says that it takes 5 - 14 days for the larvae to crawl to the top of the vials and attach themselves and hang ready to start forming a chrysalis, but when we got up this morning, we found that several caterpillars had already started to hang from their lids, so we decided today we should add the little squares of paper for them to stick to.

The paper makes it easier for you to move them to their next home ready for them to come out as butterflies :)

A helped me clean the vials out (all that webbing and poop - YUCK!!) add more food and add the paper squares before replacing the lids. We carefully took the caterpillars out and took their pictures with a penny to show how big they are now - wow they grow so fast! They weren't much bigger than a grain of rice on Monday! Less than a week later and look how long they are!!!

We use a soft artists paint brush to carefully brush them clean of webbing and poop!

So now we just wait for them to turn into chrysalis's and then we move them into our old aquarium ready for them to turn into the beautiful Painted Lady butterflies they were meant to be :)

On Friday I bought a copy of Eric Carles 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar for S. A has been enjoying reading it to S each day :)
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