Butterfly Garden 2011

Last year we observed the life cycle of the Monarch, and noticed a couple Swallowtail caterpillars.  This year we planted several different hosts plants in hopes of watching the metamorphosis of a few different butterflies.  We will be inspecting the garden often hoping to catch a glimpse of the:

      Common Buckeye

Variegrated Fritillary

 Gulf Fritillary

 Julia Heliconian

Zebra Heliconian

Silvery Checkerspot

Texan Crescent

 Monarch

Black Swallotail

 This is the start of our garden this year.

 Purple Passion Flower (thanks Mindy! :)

Host plant to the Fritillaries and Heliconians.

 Braided Shrimp Plant

Host plant to the Texan Crescent

 Mint and Lantana for nectar

 Butterfly Bush, a great nectar plant

 Firecracker

Host plant and nectar for the Common Buckeye.
 Hummingbirds will flutter to this, also.

Butterfly Weed

Host plant and nectar for the Monarch

We also planted dill, which is a host plant for the swallowtail, and a couple packets of Garden Mixture Hummingbird and Butterfly seed pack and sunflowers to attract the Silvery Checkerspot.

I am so excited to discover and observe with the kids all the inhabitants that will dwell in our garden.  We hope you will follow along and experience it with us or be inspired to create your own butterfly garden.  Happy butterfly watching!

A great lapbook to go along with your butterfly garden can be found at http://www.yeeshallknow.com
Butterfly Battle.

Butterfly Battle

We are enjoying our lapbook, Butterfly Battle, we received from the Homeschool Swap.  You can find the lapbook at http:///www.yeeshallknow.com. We are reading the Magic School Bus A Science Chapter Book #16 Butterfly Battle. 

To go along with this study we are adding new hosts plants to our butterfly garden.  Each one of the three oldest picked a butterfly that they would like to observe and watch as it goes through metamorphosis.  I will post more on this next week when we get our hosts plants.

So far in the book we have learned

To help remember the 4 stages the kids acted it out

 egg

 caterpillar

 chrysalis

butterfly

We read that a newborn caterpillar eats.....

the shell of it's own egg then it eats the leaf where it hatched.

We read that Monarch butterflies are poisonous because they eat poisonous milkweed.

We learned that Monarch butterflies do not make the round trip when migrating and that they lay their eggs as they are heading south.

Lastly we learned that the Painted Lady

photo courtesy of http://www.butterflyutopia.com/live_butterfly_kit_feeder.html

can migrate from Africa to Iceland.

We can't wait to discover many new facts about butterflies and to experience first hand the life cycle of a few new varieties this year.  To see pictures/video of the life cycle from previous years of the Monarch check out the Monarch link on the right hand side of our blog.

Spring Gardens

Vegetable Garden

Butterfly Garden

Swallowtail Caterpillar on host plant, dill.
Found tiny larvas, but couln't get camera to focus on them. They were black and orange with a white ring around the center of it.

We are starting a moth and butterfly collection this year. This moth is the first to our collection.

Butterfly Exhibit

Micah and his new friend

Catching Butterflies

Lauren, Emma, Chloe, Hannah, and Micah


My three sweet children

Butterfly Garden

Our seeds we planted last weekend are already sprouting. So excited!

Butterfly Garden

So excited!! I can't wait till this grows. We planted the following seeds: dill, parsley, impatients, marigolds, zinnia, and mint. Plants were: butterfly weed, lantana, pincushion flower, victoria blue, vinca minor, dianthus and blubonnets.