Painted Lady

Emily asked for a Butterfly House for Christmas {it was the gift she wanted the most} and when she opened it she wanted to order caterpillars right away. After I explained to her that we needed to wait until Spring, she agreed to wait, and she waited patiently too. When Spring arrived she remembered and asked if she could order the caterpillars, so order them I did!

A week or so later we received a box and inside was a plastic cup with 4 little caterpillars and a brown mush that was there food. They crawled around and ate and ate {just like The Hungry Caterpillar} and grew and grew. It was fun to check in on them every day. 

It has been a fun learning experience and hear are a few things we learned.

We learned that they sent us caterpillars that will turn into Painted Lady Butterflies and that they are one of the most common of all butterflies. We also learned that Painted Lady's have hairy front legs and because of that are grouped with other brush-footed butterflies.

The Metamorphosis of a butterfly has four stages: egg, larva {caterpillar}, pupa {chrysalis}, and adult {butterfly}. Butterfly larvae form chrysalises, characterized by a hard casing surrounding the pupae. Butterfly larvae do not spin cocoons; cocoons are protective casings built by moth larvae.