Last week was chock full of nature. First, we found this guy in the school yard, ready for his close up.
He was really quite social.
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| Just hanging out |
I've been using this
Caterpillar Identification Guide with students, which leads me to suspect that this guy was a Mourning Cloak butterfly. We soon set him down amidst the greenery to make his way in the world.
But in the classroom, we discovered many of our Painted Lady chrysalids had hatched.
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| The muconium was a little gory, but the butterflies were happily flying about. |
Even a couple we had lost hope of because they'd fallen, hatched, albeit with broken wings.
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| Here I am trying to set it free. |
Meanwhile, we had the Earth Rangers presentation in the gym.
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| Water Monitor Lizard |
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| Prehensile tailed Porcupine |
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| Raptor |
There was also a skunk, but I failed to get any pictures of him because I was overwhelmed with the cuteness. (Apologies on dereliction of duty there). Students were encouraged to visit the Earth Rangers site, which is actually full of great information and games for kids, as well as encouraging them to fundraise for animal conservation. Here's the
Earth Rangers site, so you can visit together with your child if you like. We were also happy because Henry joined us for this presentation.
Later that week, we took our butterflies out to set them free. At first I put the butterflies on the nearby tree
But they were sitting for a while and not flying away, so I started putting them on student shoulders and heads, so they could move around a bit with the butterflies. Things evolved from there.
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| Butterfly on his hat is a little hard to see |
There were a lot of butterflies
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| "They're so ticklish" |
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| This student preferred to hold the butterfly on a stick |
(I did do my best to get photos of everyone with the butterflies, but some students were also very not interested. )
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| A rare smile caught in the wild |
They hung around for quite a bit, but eventually many of them flew away.
And at the end of the day, there were just a few more new ones hatched, so our experts got to share with their parents as well.
