I have no pictures of this fact. For which I am sure you are glad. But this afternoon, at the request of my tender-hearted child, we cut open the first cocoon.
Yes. I am serious.
The cocoon was long past the 2 week period that "they" say it takes to morph into the butterfly. I had already started to think that it was a dud. But aside from that line of thinking... the other day, as I peered in to check on our tenants, I noticed a large number of little black things crawling about.
It seems we had some sort of itty bitty egg colony hatch right inside our very own cocoon abode. How lovely. Both Jet and I thought they looked like baby hornets of some sort. But aren't they supposed to hatch inside of hives or something? Anyone? Regardless, there were tons of them. Everywhere. Thankfully though, the large majority of them remained inside the glass aquarium. That is, until we threw the aquarium outside.
Lucky for me. Not so good for the overly ripe butterfly cocoon. For one of the little buglets must have been hungry. It ate a rather large hole into our butterfly-hopeful's side.
So today... We dissected it.
And I, thinking my girls would burst into tears, was rather shocked when they picked up the math manipulatives still laying out (which happened to be bugs) and started to play. Charis grabbed the plastic caterpillar. Selah grabbed some other bigger bug. They both started to act out the caterpillar's tragic death by cannibalism. Screams and other such guttural sounds ensued.
I think my girls are liking this whole homeschooling thing. Science anyway.
4 comments:
You ARE doing a great job with science! Such terrific hands-on learning! I'm impressed. :)
Now, my boys would have thought that was pretty cool...me on the other hand would have thought it was slightly gross, (and I'm an EMT!...I've seen some pretty gross stuff and thought it was pretty cool!) but would have done it anyway. Good for you for thinking to do that and not just thinking, "I want this out of my house!" :)
Science is one of my biggest downfalls. I am such a wimp. Especially when it comes to bugs.......of any kind..... and that includes caterpillars, moths, even butterflies.
Yes butterflies. We had two butterfly bushes in our yard that would attract them by the hundreds. One bright summer day I noticed my boys running in and out of the front door carrying a shoebox up to their room and back down again. When I finally went up to check out what was going on, I opened their bedroom door to see at least thirty or forty butterflies flitting around the room! One landed on me and I practically freaked. (told you I was a wimp) We opened the windows and shooed them all out. After that we had to make a 'no butterflies allowed inside' rule. Who would ever think that such a rule would be necessary??!! :)
I can't get over your possum story. That is just so crazy! I had to share it with my husband! :)
Blessings!
Oh, I'm so sorry about your tragedy! Great learning opportunity though!
You wanted pictures of my aquatic frogs...my camera is back and the froggies cooperated quite well! Visit my blog to see.
I also included a link to the company from which we bought the frogs as tadpoles. I highly recommend it!
Have a fantastic week!
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