from caterpillar to butterfly

If you're looking for an easy fun science-y craft to do with your kids, then you've come to the right place. We've been learning about insects and you can't do insects without reading the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. To go along with the book the kids worked on a series of little crafts. First, of course, they made the caterpillars. To make the caterpillars you need pompoms, glue and a clothespin. The kids ran a line of glue and then squished about six little pompoms into the glue. After they dried we clipped them onto some flowers and leaves so they could eat and worked on the chrysalisis. You need toilet paper tubes, glue and green ribbon or crepe paper. I wanted to use crepe paper but had the ribbon so that's what we used. The kids painted the tubes completely with glue and then wrapped ribbon around the tubes. These took a little longer to dry but all the more time for the caterpillars to stuff themselves. As soon as their chrysalisis were dry, the kids slid their caterpillars inside and placed them back into the leaves and flowers. Now all we had to do was wait for the metamorphosis to occur.

The caterpillars hung out in their chrysalisis for a week or so. We were finally ready for the last step. For this we needed markers, round coffee filters and a spray bottle of water. First they colored the filter with the markers. I encouraged them to color as much of the filter as possible. Then they sprayed it lightly with the water. This caused the colors to bleed together. When it was dry (and the kids were napping) I slipped the caterpillars out of their chrysalisis, scrunched the filters together in the middle and clipped them onto the caterpillars and put them right back in the flowers where I found them. The kids woke up from nap and immediately noticed the caterpillars had transformed into beautiful butterflies. Katie asked me how it happened and our friend A answered for me "It's just magic Katie."