Ladybugs and Butterflies Emerging

These nature kits have been fun, a super jumping off point for a goodly amount of interest based learning on my daughter's part! We purchased the Insectlore brand Ladybug Land and Butterfly Garden from Amazon in early March. Many of the ladybugs who went pupa have now emerged, and the Painted Lady butterflies are just about to emerge from their pupas(or chrysalis). We'll be letting them free into the garden when they are ready.

I planted a box of butterfly wild flowers(dollar store) which I hope will be coming up in the garden soon. The ladybugs should have a feast day in the vegetable garden, and among my buggy daylilies and iris.



Interesting factoid: How did the ladybug get its name?
"In Europe, during the Middle Ages, insects were destroying the crops, so the Catholic farmers prayed[for the intersession of] the Virgin Mary for help. Soon the Ladybugs came, ate the plant-destroying pests and saved the crops! The farmers began calling the ladybugs "The Beetles of Our Lady", and they eventually became known as "Lady Beetles"! The red wings represented the Virgin's cloak and the black spots represented her joys and sorrows. They didn't differentiate between males and females."

Possible origins of the name "Butterfly":

"The butterfly is so called, as one etymologist thinks, "because of its buttery softness;" or, as another suggests, because a particular sort is yellow, like butter. The German language offers something that seems to come closer. The Germans have a large kind of butterfly, or rather moth, which infests the dairy, and has a marked partiality both for butter and milk. This with them, especially in Low Dutch, is properly the butterfliege (butterfly). May not the name of the species have passed to the whole race? The same pest of the dairy is called in German buttervogel (butterbird), molkendieb (whey-thief), and milchdieb (milk-thief). It has, however, been suggested that the butterfly is properly the fluttering-fly. Conf. in old English, bate, to flutter, as a hawk. "

Coloring page.