Beautiful Butterflies

Over the last few weeks we’ve had some additions to the classroom – Painted Lady Butterflies!  They started off as teeny tiny caterpillars and they soon ate all the food and made their chrysalides. 

 

 

After a week and a half they had changed into butterflies and hatched out.  We’ve kept them for a few days and have been feeding them some nice juicy fruit which they eat using their ‘proboscis’ which is a long tube like tongue which sucks up the sweet nectar from fruit and flowers. 

 

 

We released them in the trees just outside the school so they had somewhere to land before they flew anywhere.  They took quite a while to leave the net and two didn’t really want to leave.  Miss Shearer put them onto the pieces of orange and took them out and set them in the long grass. 

 

It has been really interesting to see the changes which have taken place throughout the life cycle!