Day 27

Since the caterpillars have now become butterflies, the blog is all but forgotten and the butterflies have become mine to maintain. So, I'll share my experiences. The other day, I was changing out the sugar water that we feed the butterflies and one of them fluttered out of the habitat. I thought i would have to scoop it up and hold it securely in my hand. I put my hand around the butterfly and it immediately started sipping up the sugar water that was still on my hand. It was the most amazing thing, I had a butterfly eating off of my hand. I didn't even have to hold it, it sat contently on my hand until I put it back in the habitat.

Day 21

We had some excitement tonight. Aidan was shooting the video above and one of the butterflies fluttered out of the Treehouse (you can see it at the end of the video). I was able to scoop it up, but is fluttered out of my hands and dissappeared. We had a brief but intense search for the missing butterfly. Good news, we were able to find the escapee and return him to the treehouse unharmed.

Day 20

All five of our butterflies have emerged from their Chrysalids. Even the lazy one that chose to turn to a chrysalid on the bottom of the cup.

Day 19

Hooray! Our butterflies are here. And I like them. One has been flapping its wings but it didn't fly. We put sugar water on orange slices on the bottom of the treehouse for them to eat.

note: Three of the five butterflies have emerged. We're still
waiting on the other two. I'm hoping they will emerge in the next couple
of days.

Day 13-15

Dad : Sorry we haven't posted in a couple of days. To be perfectly honest, the chrysalids are kind of boring. All they do is hang there. Aidan promised he'd take some pictures this weekend. We should be seeing some butterfly's next week.

Day 11-12

Monday - All 5 caterpillars turned into chrysalids. One lazy one didn't even climb to the top. It just turned into a chrysalid on the bottom of the jar.




Tuesday - We moved the chrysalids into their new home today. It is hanging on our fireplace. We had to lay the lazy one down on the floor of the treehouse.

Dad's Note: It was very interesting moving the chrysalids over to the
treehouse. The one that was on the bottom of the jar, I had to pick up by
hand. Whenever I touched it, it would wiggle and squirm just like
the caterpillar. I actually dropped it the first time I tried to pick it
up.

Day 9-10

This morning, I woke up and 3 of our caterpillars were hanging from the top of their little jar. They were all still caterpillars. They were in the shape to make a chrysalid.


This afternoon (about 3:30 PM), the 3 caterpillars are already chrysalids. It is fun to watch the other caterpillars because everytime they touch a chrysalid, it moves. I shot a video so you can see.

Pretty soon we'll have to take the paper out of the jar and hang it in our butterfly home.

Day 8

The caterpillars are really getting big. There are places in the bottom of the jar that you can see through the nutrient. I hope the caterpillars turn into chrysalids soon or they will be out of food.

Day 7

Aidan shot this video tonight but then fell asleep before he was able to write anything.

Day 6

The caterpillars are getting so big.

Note: Aidan didn't have a lot to say tonight.
I think we may have waited too late to post. I'll try to get him on it a
little earlier tomorrow. I'm thinking he'll get more excited once the
caterpillars go into chrysalids. Oh, and we didn't do videos the last
couple of days because the caterpillars weren't really moving when we were
taking the pictures.

Day 5

There's silk with the caterpillars. That's weird because spider's spin silk not caterpillars.

Day 4

I wish I had sticky feet so i could walk on the ceiling. I would be like, woo this is fun. We have a new video of our caterpillars.

And we took some more pictures too:

Day 3

Our caterpillars are moving. Here is a video I made of the caterpillars. If you look closely you can see one moving.

Note from dad: Although you can see my hand in the video,
Aidan shot the video himself. I was only in charge of holding the paper so you
could see the caterpillars.

Day 2

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, I was distracted with cousin's here. My dad took some pictures for me. My caterpillars have grown so much bigger now.









When I find that they have grown to butterflies I'm going to be excited. We will keep them in our house until they complete their lifecycle. We will feed them sugar water on flowers.

Day 1

I took 2 more pictures of the caterpillars today. What is in the picture is all the caterpillars. We can already tell that they have grown.

Here is a picture of one of the caterpillars.

I'm going to take another one and upload it to the computer. Then when my blog is done, I would like to print it so I can read it all the time.

They're here!

Yay, our caterpillars are here!!! They are really small. Our caterpillars are nice. There are 5 caterpillars. They are eating from the bottom of their home. Here's our first picture.

A quick note from Dad

In case anyone is actually reading this, I wanted to post a quick note about my involvement and hope for this "experiment". I am asking Aidan to take pictures and talk/write about the caterpillars (and eventually butterflies) so that he gets the experience of daily journaling. I am trying very hard not to influence either his pictures or his words. The pictures you will see posted are pictures that Aidan is taking and picking to put on the blog and the words (though I'm having some trouble convincing him to type) are exactly (OK, maybe not EXACTLY) what he is telling me.

I'm hoping that journaling daily will help keep Aidan interested in what, to a five year old, can seem like a very slow process (overall, the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly takes an average of 3 weeks). I'm also hoping to channel his creativity into a more constructive medium than finding ways to get his younger brother in trouble.

Having never been one to journal daily, this should be an interesting challenge for both Aidan and me. I hope that you enjoy future posts.

Still waiting...

still waiting for the caterpillars in the mailbox. While I'm waiting, I would like to play my Blue's Clues computer game.

My Blog

Hello, my name is Aidan Brown. I am five and a half years old. With my dad's help, I will be using this blog to track the lifecyle of some caterpillars I received for Christmas. We sent in a form that came with our "Bugville, Live Butterfly Treehouse". We are waiting for the caterpillars to come back to us in the mail.