Butterfly Life Cycle Craft

I think it's a good time to start talking about animal life cycles with Iesha (6y)  and Iyra (5y).  We started with a butterfly. They found it interesting to know that the butterfly was first a caterpillar. They also wondered why the caterpillar is in extreme hunger and eat its own egg shell and almost everything near them.  So we watched a few videos and read some articles on butterflies.  I also decided to make this craft to show them the life cycle of a butterfly.

Fun facts about butterflies: (thanks to here and here and here.)

• Butterflies are insects.
• A butterfly's life cycle is made up four parts, egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult.
• Butterflies attach their eggs to leaves with a special glue.
• Most caterpillars are herbivores.
• Fully grown caterpillars attach themselves to a suitable twig or leaf before shedding their outside layer of skin to reveal a hard skin underneath known as chrysalis.
• An adult butterfly will eventually emerge from the chrysalis where it will wait a few hours for its wings to fill with blood and dry, before flying for the first time.
• Butterflies can live in the adult stage from anywhere between a week and a year, depending on the species.
• Butterflies have four wings.
• Butterflies taste with their feet (they laughed on this).
• Butterflies often have bright colored wings with unique patterns made up of tiny scales.
• The fastest butterflies are the skippers, which can fly at 37 miles per hour, but most butterflies travel at 5 to 12 miles per hour.
• Their eyes are made of 6000 lenses and can see ultraviolet light.
• Many adult butterflies never excrete waste - they use up all they eat for energy.
• In some areas, the number of feeding caterpillars on plants is so great that you can actually hear them munching.  Thus, manners are not important in butterfly society.

Watch videos on butterflies: here, here, here and here.

What we used.

How to make a chrysalis?

1. Cut out 2 inches x 4 inches of tissue paper.

2. Twist one end of the tissue paper.

3. Crumple another tissue paper and insert it into the unfinished chrysalis.

4. Twist the other end of the chrysalis and glue it to the twig.

How to make a caterpillar?
1. Cut a nylon string of about 5 inches long.
2. Knot one end of the string.
3. String some beads to the nylon string.
4. Secure the end with tight knot.

How to make a butterfly?
1. Stack the pieces of tissue paper together.
2. Scrunch up the center of both pieces of tissue paper and twist a pipe cleaner around it.