Pink Pajamas Penguins on the Bottom

Matsavinya matiseema va vinya yay
Pink pajamas penguins on the bottom
Pink pajamas penguins on the bottom

hmmm hmmm (not sure of the words)
The sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
hmmmmm (more unknown words)
crescendo to It's the Circle of Life!

Ok it's not really that dramatic in Room 15. There is no manic/spooky monkey holding a little lion cub over all the animals of the Savannah but it is special that we have gotten to see the middle, end, beginning, middle, and soon to be end of the butterfly life cycle.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.... no that's a different story. We got these wonderful painted lady caterpillars about a month ago (see previous post about the hot glue/trauma/butterfly crisis for more detailed history). They grew into 5 1/2 butterflies (one was kind of special needs and might have been on the spectrum). As soon as they hatched it was painted lady porn in our room! I didn't take any pictures of the explicit act simply because I didn't think it was appropriate to draw attention to it in front of the kids and because even insects should enjoy private moments of intimacy. If you really want to see it google image search it :).

Here is the boy chasing around the one any only girl.
You can tell by the size of their abdomen (butt).

I have taught my kiddos a lot of good phrases (TCB, You're on the radar,
Touch it again...see what happens!) and one that I taught them was "Peacocking" That is exactly what Lucky (they named them all Lucky...I don't know why) was doing in this picture.

3-5 days after the 8 hour humping session these tiny mint green eggs showed up. It was amazing! You could actually see the mommy butterfly sticking her abdomen down and sticking these little dots to the leaves. If you look really closely you can see a little black speck on the leaf on the left upper part and that is newly hatched caterpillar. There is also one in the middle of the left cluster of eggs. When they hatch they are less than an 1/8 of an inch long and have the biggest head (like an orange on a toothpick!) and the tiniest little bodies.

Here is a picture of the first 200 or so that hatched. Yes they are the little tiny black specks!

This is a picture of a one-week old caterpillar and one day old caterpillar. I know that this is the curse of the new mother. Every gurgle, spit-up, and dirty diaper is the best, most wonderful, special bodily fluid ever created. Even though my commitment is only for another month or so I still feel like every leaf chewed is chewed in a way that no caterpillar has ever masticated before, and every piece of frass (poop) is the most perfect frass ever created, and every little tiny molt need to be documented, photographed, and then told to everyone I know.
In essence my caterpillars are in the top 99% of all the caterpillars in the whole entire world.

This is a three-week old caterpillar on a mallow leaf stem.

Here they are getting ready to make their J shapes

Some more of the ridiculously huge 3 week old caterpillars.
On the verge of changing into chrysalises.

Here are some of the chrysalises. As the larvae inside age they get more and more beautiful!

This is a chrsyallis who attached to the top of the net. You can see the silk pat really clearly. Here is the butterfly net filled with our butterflies!!!

More metamorphic madness to follow...until the next insect installment :)
Awesome alliteration also :)

Mealworms to Darkling Beetles...an Incredible Journey

This is going to be the first of several installments about the life cycles of bugs in my classroom. Thank you in advance for reading about something that not even my dearest friends can tolerate anymore...so I am a little obsessed! I can tell when the people I work with start to get that look like they would rather live through a month of Mondays than keep listening that I have gone from "Endearingly Engaged" to "2 Cats Short of Being the Crazy Lady with the 2 Cats" Anyway...I will start where Room 15 started...mealworms! We got our mealworms and eagerly started investigating their weird (and a little creepy) body structures. They are pretty tough and the kids L-O-V-E them. Initially we had put in pretzel bits and graham crackers as food but then that was replaced by bran cereal. Here is one of our cute little mealworm...

It's so cute with it's segmented shell and little pincher mouth. Yes, these are the silly insects that my kids carry around and put on their shoulders, heads, arms, knees, shoes, noses. They even make little obstacle courses with pencils and markers to put them through.

I love his little cute face in this picture!

After waiting for months and months and months....ok less than a month. Our dearly beloved mealworms turned into "mummies" actually pupae. These particular pupae are disgusting looking. They are similar to chrysalises in that if they are bumped then they wiggle like crazy.

Initially I had put the pupae in with the adult beetles but after a tubbie cleaning in which I found about 30 pupae that had either their heads or butts chewed off I moved the few surviving ones back in with the mealworms. It was super disgusting! Even now the kids sometimes find legs and body bits in the bran flakes...sick!

This is before the adults started chewing off butts!

The adult beetles also eat bran and veggies. They have wings but can't fly and they have very sticky feet. My biggest fear is that somehow they are going to escape and invade my whole room. The kids also love, love, love these (even the ones who were scared at first). They have named them all (which makes it a little more traumatic when Sheldon was found half eaten or Rock went belly up for no apparent reason) and have races with them. I was hesitant at first to stick my hand in the tub but over time I began to do it with courage and bravery.

There are some color variations. The light one is newly hatched. When their wing covers are opened (like the one on the left) you can see the ridges that were also apparent on the pupa.

A good example of the sticky feet I mentioned earlier.