Butterflies!

This year my friend found three monarch butterflies and she shared one with me and my second grade kiddos. We watched and waited and we waited and watched and then finally he went to the top of his jar and hung in a j. 

We also made our own caterpillars.

I thought for sure that we would see him go into a chrysalis but we did not. We came into the classroom the next morning and this is what we saw

At first, his chrysalis appeared to be light green and kind of shiny. As the day went on we noticed little gold colored dots popping out on the upper portion of the chrysalis. My kiddos were amazed by that. 

We made our own chrysalis.

One morning, about 12 days later, we walked into the classroom and this is what we saw.

A beautiful monarch caterpillar!

We waited for his wings to dry. 

Later in the afternoon we said goodbye to our monarch friend and let him go.

Of course we had to make our own monarch butterflies!

After they water colored their butterflies, they cut them out and I made this bulletin board.

This is a great book to go along with your butterfly unit!