Monarchs in our Butterfly Garden
Studying Lifecycles with my Grandkids
I’m a retired science teacher. I’m also a grandma to three wonderful grandkids. My retirement goals were to spend more time in my garden and to spend time with my grandkids. Happily, the grandkids love to spend time there with me. They help to plant both vegetables and flowers. They help to water the plants, and they help to weed and to mulch around the plants.
They also love to help in the butterfly garden. We planted flowers to attract butterflies that need nectar from the flowers. There is nothing more fun than to walk outside and to have a butterfly land on your head briefly as it seeks another delicious nectaring flower. The grandkids can identify several butterflies and point them out to me as the butterflies fly through the garden.
Butterflies are insects that go through metamorphosis which means they change from one form to another form. We enjoy watching them hatch from an egg into a caterpillar and then change into a chrysalis and then change again into a butterfly. The butterfly lays an egg and the life cycle starts again. The grandkids, of course, can identify the stages and know which stage comes next.
We have plants in the butterfly garden for the caterpillars to feed on. The Monarch butterfly caterpillars only eat milkweed leaves so we…
