The Story of our Little Caterpillars

One cloudy Thursday morning in Wales, there was a knock on my door and the postman delivered us a box of 5 little hungry caterpillars.

Inside the jar, the little caterpillars ate and ate and ate and we watched on with excitement as they grew bigger and bigger.  

Now they were not hungry anymore and the wasn't little. They were big fat caterpillars!!

After about 7 days they became chrysalides!! 3 hung to the top of the jar and 2 were on the floor.

We waited a few more days for the chrysalides to harden and then transferred them to their new mesh enclosure. 

Now it was a bit of a waiting game. 

After about 4 days, the first of our 5 emerged from the chrysalide as a beautiful painted lady butterfly.

We gave it some sugar water and a slice of watermelon while we waited for the other 4 to emerge.

After 24 hours, 3 more of the butterflies had emerged! We were just waiting on the final chrysalide. It emerged the following morning. 

Today was the day that we were going to release the butterflies into the wild. We took when to one of our favourite meadows with lots of wild flowers in. 

We opened the enclosure and one by one the butterflies flew out into their new home. They stayed close to begin with; that is how we got this lovely picture.

The set was from: www.insectlore.co.uk  

We loved watching the tiny caterpillars grow, become chrysalides and emerge as beautiful butterflies. The children would wake up every morning and check on them.