Deborah Heiligman - From Caterpillar to Butterfly

T oday a caterpillar came to school in a jar.
It is eating green leaves. It is climbing and
wiggling. This tiny caterpillar is going to change.
It will change into a beautiful butterfly.

Caterpillars usually turn into butterflies outdoors. They
live in gardens and meadows and yards. But we will watch
our caterpillar change into a butterfly right here in our
classroom. This change is called metamorphosis.

Our caterpillar started out
as a tiny egg. The mother
butterfly laid the egg on a leaf.

When the caterpillar hatched out of the egg,
it was hungry. It ate its way out of its own eggshell!
Then it started to eat green plants right away.

A caterpillars job is to eat and eat and eat,
so it will grow and grow and grow.

Each day when we come into school, we look
at our caterpillar. Each day it is bigger.

Our skin grows with us. But a caterpillars skin
does not grow. When the caterpillar gets too
big for its skin, the skin splits down the back.

The caterpillar crawls right out of its own skin.
It has new skin underneath. This is called molting.
Our caterpillar will molt four or five times.

After many days our caterpillar is
finished growing. It is much bigger than when it
first came to school. It is almost as big as my little finger now.

Our caterpillar is making a special house. First
it makes a button of silk.

It uses this button to hang upside down from
a twig. Then it molts for the last time. Instead of
a new skin, this time there is a hard shell. This
shell is called a chrysalis. Our caterpillar will stay
inside the chrysalis for a long time.

Every day the chrysalis looks the same. We cant see
anything happening. But inside the chrysalis our caterpillar
is changing.

Will our caterpillar ever turn into a butterfly? Will it
ever come out of its chrysalis? We can hardly wait. But
we do. We wait and wait and wait.

Then, one day, during snack time, somebody shouts,
Look! And we all rush over to see.

The chrysalis
is cracking.

We see a head,
a body,
and then . . . wings!

Its a butterfly!

The tiny caterpillar who came to school
in a jar turned into a Painted Lady butterfly!
And we saw it happen.

Our butterfly is damp and crumpled. It
hangs on to the chrysalis while its wings
flap, flap, flap. Blood pumps into its wings.
The wings straighten out and dry. Soon our
butterfly will be ready to fly.

Our butterfly cannot stay in the jar. It needs to be
outside with flowers and grass and trees and other
butterflies.

It is a warm spring day. I put my finger into the jar.
The butterfly sits on my finger. I pull it out and our
butterfly goes free. We feel a little sad and a little happy.

We watch our butterfly land on a flower. It will
sip the flowers nectar through a long, coiled tube