Spread 'Em!

For this terms butterfly and moth study, I purchased a wonderful sample of about 35+ butterflies and moths that are native to the Southeast region of the US from a venor online. This has been a big hit with the children, and has caused much excitement and anticipation. It has also resulted in at least two pulverized butterfly specimens.

The specimens arrive (dead, of course), and with their wings closed. Each one is invidually wrapped. It feels like Christmas all over again to reveal what beautiful specimen is underneath the paper. To open the wings, you relax them by injecting boiling water into their abdomens, and placing them in a humid relaxing chamber for 24-48 hours. Once relaxed, their wings can be laid flat on a spreader and pinned down with paper and pins to dry.

After experimenting with a number of samples graciously included in the set, relaxing the butterflies has worked out surprisingly well. Yesterday was my first attempt at relaxing the butterflies and moths that I would really like the children to focus on. And this morning we set about spreading the moths that had relaxed well(The Sphinx varieties).

For prep, the kids cut on straight lines to make strips of paper to lay over the wings. For Grace (5) this is a breeze, but for Jack (3), being lefthanded with no lefthanded scissors this was more difficult and frustrating. Note to self...buy lefty scissors. We were able to successfully spread the Tobacco Hornworm Moth, Pink-spotted Hawk Moth, White-lined Sphinx, and Rustic Sphinx Moth. These are all HUGE moths that were able to take on a lot of the injected water, which is why I think they relaxed the easiest.

Tomorrow Grace will have the task of identifying the moths from a group of pictures, and then for copywork, labeling the moths that were place this evening in a riker mount.