Life Cycles – The Creative Salad

Fantastic Butterfly Life Cycle Books for Kids

This past month we’ve had so much fun learning about the butterfly life cycle!

We’ve raised and observed different types of butterflies, deconstructed a beloved classic, and read our way through dozens of butterfly books.

Here are some of our favorites:

Featured above:
Are You a Butterfly? prompts the reader to imagine themselves as a butterfly as it transforms from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly.

A Butterfly Is Patient with stunning watercolor illustrations and fascinating scientific tidbits.

Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian (above) presents a historical perspective from the Middle Ages, telling the true story of a young girl who carefully observed and documented the butterfly life cycle, thereby disproving the commonly held belief that insects were evil, created from mud in a process called spontaneous generation. What a fantastic female role model for little scientists!

From Caterpillar to Butterfly presents a story that any kid who raises butterflies at school or home can relate to: the joy at watching metamorphosis unfold firsthand in a classroom setting.

Nic Bishop: Butterflies and Moths featuring fantastic, up-close photographs of a number of different butterfly and moth species as they undergo metamorphosis.
(We also love his Scholastic Reader Level 2: Butterflies book (above) featuring many of the same photographs but written for younger readers!)

The Life Cycles of Butterflies: From Egg to Maturity, a Visual Guide to 23 Common Garden Butterflies (above) is the ULTIMATE butterfly reference book full of detailed information, stunning photos, and useful factoids about the life stages of 23 frequently seen butterflies. This book provided to be the most valuable resource in our comparison of different eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises, and butterflies. Check it out!

Other butterfly life cycle books and guides that we enjoyed include:
– Butterflies and Moths (Golden Guide)
– Waiting for Wings
– Monarch Butterfly of Aster Way – a Smithsonian’s Backyard Book
– National Geographic Readers: Great Migrations Butterflies
– Butterfly & Moth (Eyewitness Books)
– Butterfly Story
– Creepy, Crawly Caterpillars
– Butterflies in the Garden
– A Butterfly’s Life (Science Slam: Animal Diaries: Life Cycles)
– Miss Hallberg’s Butterfly Garden

Wow, did we read a lot of books this month. Please check them out!

Butterfly Life Cycle: Raising and Observing Butterflies

This past few weeks, our first “official” month of homeschooling, has flown by! For our science study, we’ve learned so much about the butterfly life cycle and observed so many beautiful butterflies!

We raised Painted Lady (using this kit) and Cabbage White butterflies:

We observed Pipevine Swallowtail eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalises at our friends Susie and Joan’s house:

We traveled to the California Academy of Sciences to see even more butterflies:

We’ve watched our daughter’s interest, enthusiasm, and knowledge grow with each activity. Kindergarten is off to a great start! (Phew.)

Click here to see all of our Butterfly Life Cycle posts.

Butterfly Life Cycle: Setting the Facts Straight — What Eric Carle Got Wrong in The Very Hungry Caterpillar Book

First an update on the butterflies we’re raising: our five Painted Lady caterpillars arrived, grew tremendously, transformed into chrysalises, and should emerge as butterflies any day now. We’ve already witnessed two Cabbage White butterflies transform from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. We’ve had a big week… I’ll try to post pictures soon!

In learning about the butterfly life cycle, we’ve discovered there is quite a bit of misinformation out there concerning butterflies.

As much as we love Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a scientist he is not. Let’s tackle some of the errors in this book.

A butterfly transforms into a chrysalis or pupa not a cocoon (that would be what some moths make). Our daughter has been correcting everyone.

And caterpillars can be picky about what they eat. Do they like swiss cheese or chocolate cake? That would be a resounding no. Each type of caterpillar has a particular plant (or set of closely related plants) that it likes to eat. Cabbage White caterpillars, for example, eat plants from the mustard family, including kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage.

Now the next part may come as a bit of a shock to you, but this butterfly, while beautiful, doesn’t really exist. ;) Oh, how I wish Eric Carle had picked a particular butterfly species and accurately depicted each of its life stages. What a great teaching tool THAT would have been.

We still love The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Heck, our daughter had a Very Hungry Caterpillar-themed birthday party (more on that here, here, and here).

Plus we learn in deconstructing a beloved classic. But how many people actually realize this book is art and poetry, not science? We didn’t think much about it before our homeschooling butterfly unit this fall and my college degree is in biology. (Doh!)

I just can’t help to feel a little grouchy over the fact that this beautifully illustrated book could be the ultimate teaching tool for millions of families. (Coulda, woulda, shoulda.)

We do have LOTS of butterfly life cycle books that are scientifically accurate and fun to read. I’ll share those with you next week.

Everyday Learning | 02: Butterfly Life Cycle

I apologize about the lack of topic diversity on the blog right now. I’m very much focused on the school year starting and can’t seem to focus on much else these days (which, I suppose, is how it should be!). So here I go, bombarding you with homeschooling posts…

I’ve noticed the best homeschooling moments happen when you least expect it.

Earlier this week I stood on our front porch in my pajamas and shouted inside to my daughter, “Honey, come here right now!” (“Mom, I just need to finish this…”) “No, really, get out here RIGHT THIS MINUTE! You don’t want to miss this!” An ominous beginning, right?!

I witnessed the most amazing thing: cabbage white butterflies laying eggs on our tree kale.

The gardener in me watched in horror, while the homeschooling mama felt ELATED (!!!) because this is exactly what we’re starting the school year off with: studying the butterfly life cycle.

We witnessed first hand the laying of the eggs:

We spotted Cabbage White caterpillars of all different sizes crawling around, munching leaves:

Heck, we even brought a caterpillar inside to continue our observation just in case we might get to see him form a chrysalis.

Never mind that Painted Lady caterpillars are currently in the mail on route to us. We’ll get to see the whole thing again with a different butterfly species.

Now THIS is how we learn.

I’m so excited.