growing butterflies

i've always wanted a butTTeRfLY gaRDeN.  so when Bear became interested in the life cycle of a caterpillar, i was so excited!  i ordered the habitat off of amazon (see here).  we had to send away for the caTeRpiLLaRS, plus $5 shipping.  it took a little bit longer for them to arrive than i thought, but when they did, i'm not sure who was more excited me or Bear.  while we waited for the caterpillars to arrive, we worked on the life cycle of a caterpillar.  you can fiND tHaT pOSt hErE

here are our butterflies on dAY 1 

here are our butterflies on dAY 4

we had our first butterfly on dAY 11

all of them had emerged by dAY 14

                      ...but this is our special girl... her wings aren't quite right.

                                          for some reason, she was named "giNKy" by Bear

by dAY 16, even i got a bit of an education... two of our buTTeRfLieS mated.

((i had to google it to make sure that's what they were doing, but it was pretty obvious))

i'm not sure if there will be eggs that we could possibly hatch caterpillars out of...

i guess wE'LL sEE!

 dAY 17 we got ready to say gOOd-bYe to "ginky"

                                        and our other wiNGeD fRieNDs...

       then we found out that they can only be released into temperatures above 55 degrees.  we've been in the low fifties this week. 

i don't think that the transition from our 72 degree house

to that coldness would probably be good for them. 

so we're waiting for a warm day...

maYBe toMoRRoW...

have you ever tried your hand at growing things with your children/students? 

what did you grow and what were the outcomes?

don't be afraid of giving a wordy answer.  include your blog addy too if you have one.

linked here