This book is a favorite at our house. It follows the progress of a hungry caterpillar as he eats his way through a varied and very large quantity of food until, full at last, he forms a cocoon around himself and goes to sleep.
Emma has been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly in Kindergarten so she has been bringing home all sorts of art work and other creative activities about caterpillars and butterflies.
One day Emma and her cousins caught a white moth. They were thrilled and wanted to save it. We made it a little home in a jar and the kids carried it around all afternoon. The next morning, to our surprise that moth had laid eggs.
Exactly one week later, they all started hatching into teeny, tiny caterpillars.
We researched online and learned that our moth was called a Tiger Moth. They eat all they need as a caterpillar and then they don't ever have to eat again their entire adult life. The caterpillars are a woolly bear caterpillar and especially like to eat raspberry leaves.
It's been fun watching them grow, just like the book describes. They eat, and eat, and eat through leaves AND they are noticeably bigger every day.
One week after they hatched, they got their fuzz. We looked at them in the morning, and they by afternoon....
BAM, there was fuzz.
It's been so exciting. I love this picture. My kids are all in their
jammies with bed head, checking on the caterpillars first thing in the morning.
There were so many of them and they were getting bigger and bigger so we decided they needed a new home.
Our home is turning into some sort of a bug zoo since all of the excitement from our little caterpillar friends. The kids keep bringing in more moths and lady bugs, they even caught a little frog.
They are SURE that these little yellow dots are lady bug eggs.
Caterpillars molt as they grow. They all did this yesterday, only I didn't grab my camera to catch it. They do this 4 or 5 times as they grow so I'll be sure to take a picture next time because it was pretty cool.
This is what our caterpillars look like today, 10 days old.
As much as we loved the book about the Hungry Caterpillar before, I think my kids love it even more now. I'm sure that every time they read it from now on, they'll have fond memories of our own little caterpillar farm.
We'll see if we can keep them around for awhile. Some woolly bears go through metamorphosis in the summer, while others overwinter and pupate in the Spring. I'm not sure what ours will do, but hopefully we don't have to wait til Spring... We'll keep you posted!
Baby Linsey
Baby Hunter
When he was little and used the nummy a lot, Emma learned that you could tell if he was smiling when he had it in his mouth because his cheeks would get big. So cute!
