Butterflies

As part of the home school curriculum for today, we spent several hours outside. It actually says to, "Spend Part of Today Outside Enjoying God's Creation," in my teacher's manual. Now, I absolutely love being outside, but it isn't always easily accomplished having three little kids in tow. However, every 6th day of our lesson I get this instruction (and I'm really trying hard to get each item in my lesson plans done). Thus, today we went to visit a local park where we not only visited the barnyard animals, had a nice picnic lunch (complete w/our 6th day book I read aloud), but also went inside the Butterfly House and were able to witness the various stages of a butterfly's life. There were many hands-on items, books available to flip through, and cabinets with caterpillars and another with chrysalises. Not to mention quite a few butterflies fluttering around the special environment created by the park:  many caterpillar and butterfly loving plants for them to feed on, small pond, all contained in tent-like structure made out of black netting.

I won't bore you with more details, but the beauty and variety of the butterflies was just amazing. We only left after I became concerned about one of the kids getting too hot. All of us had wet scalps and red faces as we tromped away to our picnic lunch.