13/4/26 – The caterpillars have arrived
At the moment they are quite inactive but they will soon start to move, eat the special food in the pots, and start to grow. We will start to see balls of waste (poo) near them and silk webbing surrounding them, and in 7 to 14 days they will begin to form chrysalises (cocoons).
20/4/26 – Wow, look how much they’ve grown
27/4/26 – The caterpillars have attached themselves to the lid of the pots and are beginning to become chrysalides. In 2-3 days the chrysalides will harden. It may look like nothing is happening, but an amazing transformation is taking place.
4/6/26 – Nearly all the caterpillars have transformed into chrysalides now and are hanging from the lid of the pots. We will soon be transferring them to a net ready for when they change into butterflies. We have learned a new, and tricky word, for this process – metamorphosis.
11/6/26 – We have moved our chrysalises, placed them on the chrysalis station and put it safely in the butterfly net.
In 7 – 14 days the Painted Lady butterflies should emerge!
15/6/26 – Still no change from the chrysalises. They are mostly still, but occasionally they will wiggle about, which the children find very exciting!
18/6/26 – We had a surprise when we came into nursery this morning…….some of the butterflies had emerged.
We have four butterflies in Oak room and one cocoon. In Willow room we are still waiting for the first butterfly to emerge.
We now need to give them sugared water and fresh fruit to feed on.
In a few days we will release them in the garden
18/6/26 – RELEASE DAY!
We have been looking closely at the butterflies and using information books to find out more. We put fruit and sugar water in the net for them to feed on and have been careful not to bang the net and risk scaring or hurting the butterflies.
Yesterday was the big release day. Some of the butterflies didn’t fly straight away and perched on Tanya and Lianne’s hands!
The children were very excited to see them finally fly away. We wondered if they would stay in or garden and perhaps lay eggs to continue the lifecycle we had been learning about.
It has been really interesting having the caterpillars and watching the process of METAMORPHOSIS. We hope you’ve enjoyed watching along at home.
