Thursday 7 June 2012

some summing up

Now that our beautiful watercolour butterflies…..

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are mounted and displayed in all their delicate glory on the wall of the classroom, we thought we’d take one ‘last’ look, just to see what we had remembered about their life-cycles.

We remembered that the female butterfly lays her eggs underneath a leaf.  As Melchior pointed out, this is ‘because of protection’; to keep them hidden from ‘predators’ which might otherwise feast on a tasty butterfly-egg snack!

We know that tortoiseshell butterflies…..

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for example, lay theirs underneath a nettle

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leaf; but that this pretty white one…..

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(it’s called a black-veined white for rather obvious reasons) will lay hers on a hawthorn leaf.  And we know why this is too!  The tortoiseshell caterpillar (which is what will hatch out of the egg) eats only nettle leaves but the black-veined white eats only - yes, you’ve guessed - hawthorn leaves.

We know that caterpillars just eat and eat and eat.  And then they eat some more.  That they are really just eating machines!   This one clearly loves prickles!

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We know they are so very greedy that, just like a 6 year-old soon grows out of his pyjamas, they even grow out of of their skins!  They burst, they eat so much!  But we know that this is OK (and not in any way messy); caterpillars are meant to pop out of their skins.  It’s all part of the cycle of their life.

We know that after they have eaten enough, they spin some silky thread and attach themselves to something (in this case the frame of a window)…..

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to ‘pupate’ (or change) from a caterpillar into…..

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a beautiful…..

remember fuzzy felt?

butterfly.

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Who will lay her eggs underneath a leaf…..and so the story continues.  Round…..

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and round…..

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and round…..

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and round…..

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it goes.

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PS You might like to click on the following interactive life-cycles activity link.

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