Sunday, May 19, 2019

metamorphosis magic







"It's no secret that kids are spending more time inside playing on screens and less time outside playing in the woods. One recent study in the United Kingdom found that the average child there spends less time outdoors than the average prisoner," writes Jamie González for Nature Conservancy magazine.

What are we doing to our youth? 

When I discovered that a lot of homeschool kids were visiting Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge with their parent/teachers, I made sure to have a bit of nature at my Author's Table for a hands-on Show & Tell. Most days it was monarch butterfly caterpillars and milkweed leaves provided by Clare Dattilo and Glenna Julian

Young naturalists are fascinated by the life cycle of a butterfly: egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to winged adult, i.e. metamorphosis. And that's a bit of real life magic you won't find online but outside in your own backyard. And it happens unheralded millions of times a year, but few of us take the time to notice.







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