Reminiscing over the school year #1

Last fall my students went out and collected as many caterpillars as possible. They wanted to watch them form into a cocoon. Educational, so why not? We put them into an old ice cream container with a notebook overtop to protect them. My students kept busy at recess collecting food (milkweed) for them.

Disclaimer: should be hanging vertically not horizontally. It was soo cool to watch them form their cocoons. They all started at their heads, while hanging from a very fine thread. Each cocoon looked exactly the same.

There was beautiful gold incorporated into the cocoon. Each was exactly the same. They quickly turned into monarch butterflies. We let them go (my camera was not around). The problem is that winter was coming. I wonder if any of our butterflies survived.