Science Sunday: Caterpillars

I am happy to say we still have our frogs, in fact here is a picture of the one perched on the rim of the jar in the aquarium.

(Isn't he cute?)

But this post is dedicated to our new observation subjects, caterpillars.  My friend is always finding monarch caterpillars and this year, while we were discussing the tadpoles/frogs, we got on the subject of the monarchs and she said she may be able to get me a few.  That was a couple of weeks ago, and she came through.  She was able to get us 3 different sized caterpillars.

September 8th (really early in the morning, before I went to bed,

so we could call this September 7th which is the day we got them, I

had only just put them in the garden.  They had been in a bucket

but I had left the lid off earlier and we had an escapee)

(If you look really closely you can see the little caterpillar on the top

right leaf directly below the daisy.)

She told me the big one was just about ready to form a J.  She was right (guess she would know having observed them for years), the caterpillar formed its J later that day, this picture was taken around 11:30 pm.



And then, one morning (Sept 10th) I woke up and it was in a chrysslis.  The funny thing was, when hubby got home from work it was still in the J, by the time we got downstairs it was fully in the chryssalis.  Doesn't take long, unfortunately because then it is easy to miss.

I do love the little tiny goldish shiny dots around the top, not sure if you can see, but they are over to the left, from this angle they are almost halfway down on the bump.

Come check out others' science lessons, or link up your own at Adventure in Mommydom and Science Sunday