New Monarch Eggs!

I walked outside today to get the mail, and there fluttering around was a beautiful monarch.  I had seen others this year, but much earlier this spring, well before any of our milkweed was even growing.  This is the first one I have seen since the milkweed has been big enough to support any caterpillars.  She was flitting from one milkweed plant to the next depositing her eggs.  I called the girls out so that they could witness this.  They were all enthralled, as they were last year, and were eager to bring a few eggs inside so that we could watch them grow (well, okay, Madeline wanted to bring them all inside, but I limited her to 3).  So we checked out the tiny eggs and placed them in a safe location and then pulled up some of the information we found last year on the internet.   Hailey was really excited to look at the butterfly and the caterpillars.  We talked about all of the stages as we looked at the pictures.  

Later in the day, we were picking up downstairs and found a plastic Painted Lady butterfly. Hailey picked it up and wrapped it in a towel and showed us all how the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis.  Then, she found a pencil case and zipped the butterfly into the pencil case.  She then unzipped it and showed us again how the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis.  Needless to say, I was pretty impressed that she was able to come up with those ideas.  Probably better demonstrations than I could come up with!