This summer we ordered caterpillars to live in our butterfly habitat. They came in a little cup with lots of food. The directions said to leave them in the cup until they formed chrysalises and then move them to the habitat. We decided to let them live a better life in the habitat directly. The kids picked some branches and we put the food cup in and let the caterpillars roam.

The first step of the transformation is noticeable when the caterpillars attach to something and hang down in a J shape.

I used a high-tech tracking system to monitor their progress. :)

After 17 days in the habitat we had our first butterfly! These are painted lady butterflies that are drab on the underside and brightly colored on top.

Can you see the drab colored butterfly?

It’s hard to take pictures through the habitat walls. The camera just wants to focus on the netting, not what’s inside. Plus, of course, we have clutter in the background as well.

Three of the butterflies hatched in one day. We had a houseful of kids who enjoyed the process and eagerly prepared some butterfly food (sugar water) for them.

Three butterflies hatched the first day and a fourth hatched the next day. One caterpillar never fully completed the chrysalis transformation and one chrysalis fell and didn’t survive the butterfly transformation, so of the six caterpillars we started with we ended up with four butterflies.

We left them for a few days for our trip to Franklin and when we returned they were actively trying to fly in the habitat, despite the dried leaves and sticks in the way. We decided to let them free!

We took the habitat out on the front porch and opened the top.

Fly away little flutter-byes.

The first three butterflies flew away, one at at time, over the course of the first five minutes. We waited awhile on the last butterfly, but it didn’t fly away. After awhile we just left it on the porch. Then we put fresh branches in the habitat and put the butterfly food back, right near the top, hoping to tempt it up to the opening. Didn’t work. Eventually Eve just picked it up with her hands and blew it away. Success!

Overall a fun experience. I was thinking, later, that if I were a real sciency teacher/mom I should have made the kids keep a science journal with observations and predictions and whatnot. Instead we just ignored the directions and did what we wanted to with them. Great example to set. :) But we had fun and that’s important to. Maybe we’ll do it again next summer with more precision. Or not.

While I had to work today (so… many… parent/teacher conferences!) Alan was home with the kids and they did all sorts of fun things with Daddy! First they went to vote, then they went out to lunch and the grocery store (where Eve spent all her money on Easter junk), and then they came home and did some science!

They have been talking about doing this experiment for a few days now and I encouraged Alan to have the kids write up the experiment. Get some academics in there! He thought it was a great idea. I also asked him to write up this blog post, but he was less excited about that. :)

The experiment was to test the level of electricity generated by citrus fruits, and they decided to compare to non-citrus things as well. I would love to give more details, but I really don’t know them, so I’ll have to let the photos do the talking. When I left this morning I said, “I’ll leave the camera here on the counter, just in case you guys need it today!” They clearly picked up on my hint!

This looks yummy!

See the little bulb lit up?

Some 9v cells make it brighter!

Eve’s notes

Lex’s notes

The back side of Lex’s notes.

We have a new science experiment on our table. We’ve been monitoring it for several days now and enjoying the changing colors.

We started with four bowls of water and two empty bowls (gotta keep things evenly divisible by two when you have two kids :) ) Each kid got to chose two colors and put a few drops of food coloring into two bowls of water. Then the rolled up paper towels and made bridges between the cups of colored water and the empty cups.

The theory was that the water would wick up the paper towels and back down the other side, filling the empty bowls. Each empty bowl had two paper towel bridges coming in to it, so there would also be some coloring mixing as a beautiful side effect.

We watched it closely while we had afternoon snack. Within an hour or so the color was making good progress. For some reason we don’t understand the yellow wicked much faster than the other two colors.

By the end of dinner the yellows had started dripping into the empty bowls, and creeping up the dry end of the other paper towel bridges!

The next morning all of the colors had made it over their bridges and were dripping into the middle bowls, creating lovely shades of orange and green.

Lex filled each of the water bowls up evenly, but somewhere along the way between the sink and the table some water spilled out of one of them (the yellow bowl across from the blue). As the water levels tried to level out, some of the green water started working it’s way up the yellow bridge!

Saturday evening, about 24hrs after we started the project, it looked like this.

This afternoon, nearing 48hrs since we started the experiment, the green hasn’t yet made it to the yellow. The wicking action is slowing down. I wonder if the paper towels get saturated? I’m just guessing at the science behind all of this because I’m too lazy to look it up (ok, I did a quick Wikipedia search for the basics). Maybe we’ll leave it for another day or so. Eventually things have to get cleaned up around here.

For now I’m just enjoying the beautiful experiment/table decoration. Especially considering the rest of my table decorations consist of two candles we haven’t used in ages, two vases of dead flowers (which will be freshed up at our trip to the farm tomorrow) and an empty yogurt cup with a dead flower and a (likely also dead) little worm Eve brought home yesterday.

Hooray for colorful science!

Lex got a book for his birthday (from me!) called Science Rocks and he has been happily reading it ever since. Towards the end of last week he decided to try a few experiments. Unfortunately we don’t have most of the “common household items” that the experiments need, like empty 2 liter bottles and plastic hosing. Today he found one that we did have all the supplies first and he was thrilled! At 7:00am we were doing scientific experiments!

Today’s experiment was about color separation. Or water wicking. I didn’t read the book.

They each drew a big dot on strips of coffee filters, put the ends of the filters into water, and watched as the water wicked up the filter and brought the colors along with it.

Lex got great color separation with the colors he chose! Eve’s orange and pink didn’t do as well. (this picture was taken by Lex)

Last week they tried to make a hydrolic lift but we had too many substitute parts and the painters tape didn’t hold up to the water and the whole thing just didn’t work out.

This is Lex’s hydrolic lift. It leaked water every step of the way. :(

This is how it was supposed to look!

Eve’s experiment is the one in front. She is less interested in directions and instead chose to make up her experiment as she went along. She had a very elaborate story which I can’t really remember. It involved a generator (not show) which would spin fast and generate steam and… something. It all sounded scientific and quite plausible, as long as you didn’t listen very closely. :)

Funny girl!

Eve has actually been in “scientist” mode for quite awhile. Before Lex even got out the book she was talking about conducting experiments. This particular “experiment” started by mixing food ingredients (marshmallows, graham crackers, butter) and was shaping up to be quite a tasty experiment, but then she started adding rocks and balloons and more expensive food items, so I had to cut her off and send her outside. This is what she came back with. I’m still not sure what the purpose of the experiment was as her hypothesis kept changing. :)