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As some of you know I recently bought some caterpillars so that my children could witness first hand the lifecycle of the butterfly. We've been picking fresh nettle leaves daily for them and watching them eat and grow. They then transformed themselves and today have emerged as the most beautiful butterflies. Here's some photos of them as they were released into our garden.

Beautiful - and what a lovely project for your children.   ;D

G xx

Wow.  I would have cried to let them go.   :'(  I hope you named them all.

 :D no we didn't name them, just wished them luck as they flew away, quite a happy occasion really. We'll always wonder now when we see a peac0ck butterfly in the garden if it is a decendent from those released today. Anyone with young children, I can't recommend this project enough, my children have learnt so much and the picture on their faces today was priceless.  :)

Wow what a great project my 4 year old would love that as she adores butterflies. Can you tell us where you got the caterpillers from or did you just collect them.
regards
Chriszog

Chriszog, my children are almost 4 and 6 and it really was a worthwhile project to do with them. I ordered the caterpillars from Worldwide Butterflies (the schools pack), I didn't want to take caterpillars from the wild. It's quite pricey at £20 odd but having done it I can say the learning experience was well worth it, a day out at the farm park would have cost the same, and this experience will be remembered a lot longer than a day out. Here's the website if you're interested but I'm not sure if it's too late to order this year, perhaps a project for next year. The first caterpillars (tortoiseshell) arrived a while ago (april I think) and the Peac0ck's arrived a few weeks ago (june), with the two deliveries we got to watch the cycle twice and that was nice because second time around the children knew what to expect and the excitement was even greater.  :D

http://www.wwb.co.uk/

what a wonderfull project to do with your children and what a result

Number one sons pre-school did the very same thing and they released their peac0ck flutterbies on Monday.  He was very excited by the whole event and is now very aware of not only the butterfly life cycle, but the ladybird and dragonfly.

Jessie, what beautiful creatures !  thanks for sharing this school project with us ! :D ;D

Our reception year one class did it last year and there results were a little disappointing.  I am glad your experiments all went well and we have a few more butterflies in the wild.

PS Have you noticed how nearly all the good looking butterflies eat weeds but the boring ones eat our crops.  It does make 'disposal' easier to bare.