The Beacon Butterfly Release
2 July 2021
Our Year 5 boys have been studying Life Cycles in Science. Three weeks ago they were introduced to the caterpillars, no bigger than their fingertips, and have followed their growth and metamorphosis into butterflies. This week, they had the opportunity to release the fully-developed Painted Lady butterflies back into the wild to continue their life cycle. The boys showed great care and gentleness when handling the butterflies and certainly cheered them off in exuberant fashion! Some of our Year 5 boys wrote a summary:
In Science we have been learning about life cycles and this week we have been doing a project on butterflies.
Mr Horn and Mrs Pandya have been looking after our newborn babies (nymphs). We have been watching our caterpillars transform into butterflies and seen all the amazing stages. We had 20 caterpillars and miraculously 19 butterflies popped from their chrysalis. On Thursday we released the magnificent and beautiful butterflies into their natural habitat. The weather conditions were just perfect to let them go – sunny, warm and not raining! The temperature has to be above 12 degrees. They are now free to continue the butterfly population, find food (nectar) to survive and lay eggs on leaves.
In English, our project has been really fun. We have been doing crosswords, leaflets, poems, origami, word searches and researching the top 10 butterflies and putting it all into a magazine. This has been the best project!
Jonas B and Miles E, Year 5
