Butterfly Class

Jayden had a field trip today with eCademy to Bontanica to learn about butterflies.  We started out inside a little building and learned about the butterflies that live here in Kansas, and their anatomy.

Then the kids got to look through microscopes at all different parts of a butterfly - legs, wings, eyes, tongue.  And also with magnifying glasses at different butterfly wings.

Then, they moved outside to learn about what butterflies eat.

And how they see through their compound eyes.  The kids got kelidascopes with 800 "boxes" in them, just like a butterflies eye, to look around with.

Then, it was onto migration.  The Monarch butterfly can migrate as far as 3000 miles, from Canada to Mexico, so the kids got to play a game to simulate that.  But since we are already in Kansas, they got to start there and travel through Oklahoma, then Texas, then into Mexico.  The kids all got monarch butterflies on a green colored popsicle sticks and had to start fluttering through the state and stop at the next state line to pick up nectar and water.  However, to make it more life like, they put predators out in the field - a bird, a spider, and a semi-truck.

The kids fluttered through to the next state line trying not to get "eaten" by a predator.  If they got caught, they had to give up their popsicle stick butterfly.

At the Oklahoma and Texas state line, if they had lost their butterfly in the previous state, they got to pick up a new butterfly on a different colored popsicle stick (orange for Oklahoma and red for Texas) and try to make it to Mexico with their new one.

Once in Mexico the kids lined up by the color of their sticks and they could see how many butterflies from each state made it to Mexico, representing how dangerous a journey it is for the butterfly to make it from Canada to Mexico.  In the spring, when the Monarch's start their journey back north, they stop and lay their eggs along the way and die, and I guess as many as 4 generations of the Monarch can live and die before they make it back up to Canada.

After the game, we went over to the butterfly house, where the kids got to see an actual Monarch butterfly get tagged and released.  Then we were given a piece of paper with that Monarch's tag, so we can now track the butterfly and see how far it gets and if it actually makes it to Mexico!

Then it was into the butterfly house to see if we could get a butterfly to land on us.

While Willow managed to get a couple butterflies, Jayden was far more interested in the chrysalis cupboard where there were actual butterflies in the making, one he watched hatch right out and another chrysalis you could see wiggling and moving around.

I really like the turquoise ones with the gold trim, otherwise known as the Queen butterfly.

It was a fun field trip and because Jayden and I doubled up on school work yesterday, we get today off!