Butterfly STEAM Event

Today is an exciting day in our library!  We are hosting a butterfly pavilion where children as young as two can experience real-live monarch butterflies.  We’re hosting a story time this morning and an afternoon program for elementary school children this afternoon.  Throughout the day, the pavilion will be open for families to stop by and see the butterflies.  And it’s the perfect day – our school district is closed in observance of Rosh Hashanah and it’s a little rainy today – a wonderful day to visit the library for a special event!  Monarch butterflies begin migrating the 2,000 miles to Mexico around this time, so it was the perfect time of year to host an event like this.
During the day we also have passive programming set up – a butterfly craft that the children can color in, cut out and paste onto a popsicle stick making a fun puppet!  We also have a project for the kids about the life cycle of butterflies and the woman who in charge of the program also brought chrysalis, photographs and handouts.
I’m excited to provide this type of STEM activity for young children to experience – up close and personal observance of nature.  The children will get a chance to feed the butterflies with Gatorade and a Q-tip and even hold them in their hands if they would like.
As a side note (and this blew my mind!) caterpillars do not spin cocoons, they have chrysalises, which means Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar actually has false information – the caterpillar should have a chrysalis, not a cocoon. 🙁