In Reply to: Re: Link posted by Farmer on July 09, 2010 at 10:06:08:
I wasn’t expecting to be working with children this summer, but when one of the teachers who had committed to working in June suddenly decided to go to Mexico for two weeks, I was asked if I could fill in. When the school agreed to pay me a generous wage, I decided to help them out -- so nice of me, lol. This is a Montessori school btw, which has a limited number of certified teachers to draw on. Does Germany have any Montessori Schools?
Once I had decided to take on the job, I was then confronted with how to adapt the theme they had given me, i.e., gardening.
I knew that that it was the wrong time of the year to begin a vegetable garden -- too hot, not enough time. So it came to be that creating a butterfly garden and studying the life cycle of butterflies would be a much more entertaining prospect. I immediately ordered 6 live painted-lady butterflies from a science catalog, rather than trying to catch a half dozen of the same species, and then borrowed a habitat. On the first day of day camp, my little campers (ages 3 - nearly 6) were mostly very enthusiastic, except for one little guy who was more interested in kicking balls with his newly acquired cowboy boots. We let him do his thing. The rest of us began digging in the garden and planting our flowers, using those that grew well in our Texas heat, e.g. hibiscus, purple sage, zinnias, sunflowers, etc. After that, we decorated the garden with painted rocks and handmade butterflies. We made butterfly nets and decorated bug jars incase we caught an interesting specimen that we wanted to observe for a while. The children chased an allusive blue dragonfly around the grounds until they nearly dropped from exhaustion, but we finally caught a small yellow butterfly that we observed and let go.
The butterfly habitat stayed in our classroom so that the children could feed and observe the painted ladies. We discovered that these delicate creatures absolutely love orange slices. They light on the slices, extend their long proboscis and sip as if through a very thin black straw. In addition to their eating habits, the butterflies also taught us about reproduction. You may be familiar with teaching children about “the birds and the bees,” well, I think that “the butterflies” might be more instructive. Something that I didn’t know until this experience is that butterflies can mate for hours. One day there was a little boy who was worried about the butterflies that were stuck together. Not sure what to say, but wanting to be truthful, I said, “oh, they’re just making new butterflies, they’ll be fine.” Before we released them outdoors after a week and a half, the females had laid at least 100 teeny, tiny, light-green, jeweled eggs. I decided to keep a leaf that was covered by these little beauties to see if they would actually hatch. I put them in an empty, large yogurt container with holes punched in it and set it aside. A few days later there were about 40 of the smallest caterpillars/larvae that I had ever seen. In the wild, one would rarely see these little creatures due to their size and camouflage. My motherly instincts suddenly kicked in when I gazed upon them, and I began hunting for just the right leaves (thistle only) to keep these insatiable critters fed. As time passed, we began to notice that each time the larva appeared to be larger, they left behind a small fuzzy ball – shedding the old skin (man ☺). As they grew, the children and I became more excited as we realized that they would soon create their chrysalises. Now, I have to say that this is the most fascinating part of their metamorphasis. The caterpillars would spin a little web and stick their backside to a twig or the side of the jar. They then hung upside down in a J shape. It takes nearly a day for the process to happen, but the body becomes covered by a thin translucent
"skin" that at first looks something like the larva itself, but slowly transforms into more of a butterfly body. Eventually, you can actually vaguely see the wings (folded) inside the chrysalis when it’s nearly time to open. My last week with the children ended before the chrysalises opened, but I left three of them with the new teacher so that they could enjoy the "opening ceremony." I took one chrysalis home with me for my own pleasure. If you are wondering what happened to the other 36 larvae, well, I let them go into a field of thistle since feeding and cleaning their little habitats, which had grown to 4 yogurt containers, became a bit much.
If you have any grandchildren, I would really encourage you to have this experience with them, if you haven't already. It made my summer.