Our third graders are studying butterflies in their classroom. Each child has their own painted lady caterpillar. Over the last couple of weeks the caterpillars have been feeding and shedding their skins.

In the last couple of days they have turned into a chrysalis as they await to be transformed into an adult butterfly. Since the children do not get to see this incredible transformation of caterpillar to chrysalis, we decided to video tape one of the cateprillars. Once it attached itself to the top of a cardboard box, Mr. Hildreth found a safe location in the library. He set up a webcam which was programmed to take one picture every second. The caterpillar changed into a chrysalis around 1:00 in the morning.

Below is a video made from the still images captured by the webcam. It takes the caterpillar between 15 and 20 minutes to change into a chrysalis. Hope you enjoy this as much as we did!