MIY Monday: Nature Class Project

Homeschooling is upon us! Maggie turned 4 this summer, and Lilly will be 3 next month, and we are starting home education this year, doing some preschool activities with both girls.

I am excited to do some hands-on activities with the girls, and hatching butterflies was our first 'Nature Class Project'.

My Mom gave the girls one of these a few months ago:

No, these are not my kids... I don't know who they are.

This cute, collapsable butterfly garden came with a coupon to redeem for a set of 5 live caterpillars. We redeemed our coupon online at insectlore.com and paid $3 shipping. A few days later, our live caterpillars arrived in the mail. The girls were very excited, since I had been talking to them about our project.

We watched our caterpillars crawling around and within a few days, they crept to the top of the cup to hang upside down, and begin their transformation.

This company guarantees at least 3 caterpillar chrysalides (cocoons) will hatch. But all 5 of ours hatched into Painted Ladies. Unfortunately, we missed every single one of them hatching. But the girls were so excited to keep checking the garden and discover a new butterfly had been born.

We picked some flowers and sprinkled sugar water on them for the butterflies to eat. After a few days of watching our pretty little friends, we let them go in the front yard. The girls squealed and said 'bye butterfly!' each time one took flight.

This was an easy, affordable, and fun project for us to do as a family; even Jeff enjoyed participating in our butterfly hatching. The girls learned more from this experience than they would have just reading a book and looking at pictures. We folded up our garden and put it away in the front closet, but we will definitely do this again. Even if you are not homeschooling, I definitely recommend this project.

What other Make-It-Yourself homeschool projects have you been up to?

Hope you've had a Happy Monday, everyone... that means you!

Shannon