Family Fun - Week 5

Our New Year's resolution was to do at least one family activity or outing, just the five of us, every week this year. This is week 5 of family fun.

Finian was sick last week, bronchiolitis and an ear infection, so he wasn't really up for a big outing at the weekend. The Cambridge butterfly conservatory is on our list of potential family fun activities, so we decided to go there to cheer Finian up a little. I knew Finian would love it, but it surprised me how much Fiacra and Ailbhe enjoyed it too.

Finian, still looking under the weather.

Ailbhe

One of the people working there was really friendly and informative. He told us that the butterflies with the really bright, almost unnatural looking chrysalis are usually poisonous, like these two. We watched lots of butterflies emerge from their chrysalis and hang to dry.

Ailbhe asked him where all the caterpillars were. He said that they don't breed butterflies at the conservatory, they import chrysalises from Costa Rica and the Philippines. They have a bird population to take care of the caterpillars - otherwise the caterpillars would eat everything in sight. They do have a few caterpillars though and he brought out an owl butterfly caterpillar to show her, not a handsome guy!

He pointed out the eggs of an owl butterfly on a leaf, they are pretty tiny.

Ailbhe and Fiacra holding the owl butterfly caterpillar. 

Owl butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

If a newborn human baby experienced the same growth rate as this owl butterfly caterpillar, it would be the size of a school bus within 3 weeks.

The kids got to touch this guy.

We are loving our family fun activities. It was a great resolution and we are determined to stick to it.