Butterfly Stories

The other day we had the neatest experience--we were about to go on our morning walk when we found a Monarch butterfly in our yard.  He wasn't flying at all, he was just sort of resting.  Bella, who thinks she's Snow White, or St. Francis of Assisi, went right over to him and picked him up.  So instead of going on our walk, we just hung out with the butterfly.  I went and made a little mixture of agave and water and put it on a dish to see if he might eat some.  At first, nothing happened.  But then, after Bella put some on her finger, we saw his tongue completely unrolled and drinking off of her finger!!  It was TOTALLY exciting!!  Lala then took a turn and so did I!  It was amazing to see his tongue roll up when he would take a break and then unroll again to drink some more.  I've never had an experience like this in my life so I felt like my little girls were pretty lucky to have the opportunity to feed a butterfly from their finger.

We decided to have our circle time outside in our yard with the butterfly.  I got out our silk butterfly wings and Lala and Ceci wore them and danced around to a song we made up about butterflies.  It was really fun.

Later, we had to leave for our ballet class and other errands.  We left the butterfly in a large box with more nectar but when we got home, we found he had passed away.  We were sad, but it made sense that he was probably on his way to "butterfly heaven" when we found him.  We felt so blessed for the experience that we had with him.  Now we have his beautiful wings on our nature table.

So today on our walk, we found a house that seems to have an unusual amount of butterflies inhabiting their ferns and Lantana.  We saw at least 20 Monarch butterflies flying around and going in and out of the ferns and bushes!  There were many up in the air going around in circles looking like they were dancing.  It was an amazing sight.  I tried so hard to get a picture that would capture what we saw, but there was really no way to.  Click on the last picture to get a small idea of what we saw.  I feel so blessed that I get to stay at home with my children and home school them and that we get to have these wonderful experiences!  It's so nice to have the freedom to choose how our days go!