I miss penny it's very nice to meet you we're happy to be here at butterfly world and happy to meet a butterfly expert what's your official title you could call me a lepidopterist what is that title again and let the doctor it's not somebody who studies butterflies I waited your job here teaching people how to attract butterflies to their garden and what tools you need in order to attract those butterflies I would come here pretty often as a guest and one day I saw that they had the now hiring sign and I thought what a perfect place to work I take my my love for butterflies and my love straight teaching people about the environment that's terrific so now you get to teach what you love and what you're better by so important to our ecosystem hold their pollinators and they also serve as food for other bigger animals if we wanted to grow our own butterfly garden what exactly do they mean so two components you need host plants and nectar plants so the host plants are going to serve us food for your caterpillars that's where the female butterfly is going to lay her eggs and you also need nectar plants this is going to serve us food for your adult butterfly interesting thanks we could keep missing kids and teach them about butterflies and how to make a butterfly garden sounds great [Music] now we are in the lab with the children and let's learn about the life cycle of a butterfly sure thing so the life cycle with a butterfly it has four stages everybody put four fingers up so stage number one is going to be the egg can you all say egg Hey can you all say caterpillar for stage number 2 then chrysalis chrysalis and finally the butterfly very good do you guys want to meet a caterpillar yeah okay so over here I have an idea caterpillar idea caterpillars are native to Asia native just means that their home is in now usually when we go into our backyards and we see a caterpillar with spikes are we gonna touch it sometimes kind of please yeah leave it alone sometimes caterpillars with spikes may be poisonous but I know that my friend Pat this is Pat by the way my friend Pat over here he's not poisonous to the touch would you guys like to put my friend Pat okay very softly you can say this is a baby version of the butterfly very good yes question really jazzy feel song he's very soft so this is stage number two of the butterfly's lifecycle the caterpillar you can call this the caterpillar or the larva can you guys say larva very good so underneath this lid over here are all butterfly crystallises so you can see one caterpillar he's all big and fat and chubby now he's getting ready to shed his last skin and then underneath that last skin will be the chrysalis or the pupa how do they hold on so the way they stick themselves to a leaf a plant or a lid like I have here is a little piece of white sticky sticky silk that they used to glue themselves to the top of wherever they think it's gonna be a safe place to go into their chrysalis or pupa so all of these butterfly crystalisses they're gonna turn into butterflies within a couple weeks maybe a couple months depending on the kind of butterfly it is and when the butterfly is ready to come out the first thing that butterfly has to do is dry his or her butterfly wings so once it's ready to come out they'll release a little bit of butterfly blood called meconium and then once he starts to fly around in this little container he's ready to go but his metamorphosis man so metamorphosis is just a big word for change that caterpillar he changed from a little larva a little caterpillar to a butterfly now he's an insect he went through a complete transformation are you guys ready to meet my butterfly friends yeah all right let's go meet them [Music] we're in the aviary and we're going to learn about the parts of a butterfly so do you guys remember in the lab when we met Pat the caterpillars yeah do you guys think that Pat's big brother sister's going to be yellow pink or blue blue okay pink pink how about yellow white and black so this is big sister this is what Pat the caterpillar is going to turn into because the idea of butterfly er so all butterflies have three main body parts they have a head everybody point at your head they've got a thorax right over here the thorax on a butterfly controls their muscle and body movements like their four wings can you pop your core butterfly wings the thorax also controls their six butterfly legs can you stomp your six butterfly legs after the thorax they have an abdomen can everybody say abdomen so the abdomen is like there it's like their belly very good inside their abdomen they store their eggs and their nectar so boys and girls can you guys stomp your feet again can any of you boys and girls taste a floor with your toes right now are you a butterfly still butterflies they use their six legs for tasty have you guys ever had a butterfly kiss before very good very good yeah do you guys want to know how to get butterflies in your backyard like we have here at butterfly world on host plant is basically a butterfly's favorite plant every kind of butterfly has a different host plant a different favorite plant you guys know about the monarch butterfly her favorite plant is called milkweed everybody's very good so the monarch is only going to lay their eggs on milkweed because that is the only plant her little caterpillars will eat they won't eat your roses they won't eat your daisies or your sunflowers just smoke weed would you like to plant a butterfly garden can we do that actually let's go play the butterfly garden let's do it how do you plant your butterfly garden to plant a butterfly garden you need two things you need a host plant and you need nectar plants your host plants are gonna be food for your caterpillars your nectar plants are gonna be food for your adult butterfly over here to our left we have cool teen boys and girls you can touch this plant this is the food plant for the Attalla butterflies the Italo butterfly is a really beautiful little black and blue and red butterfly she's so pretty and she's only going to lay her eggs on this one plant now what happens if we don't have this plant there's no eggs no eggs no Italo butterflies so if we got rid of this plant this point no longer exists then that butterfly no longer exists so that's why it's so important to plant host plants or food plants so that we can promote the survival of the butterflies and then whether the butterflies bees so the butterflies they're gonna sip nectar the bottom finds no longer have a mouth now they have a straw lake tongue called a proboscis that they used to sip nectar and they're gonna sip nectar from flowers such as this flower over here this is sweet almond this is a wonderful nectar plant the butterflies love this kind of flower they also love Porter weed over that's so pretty this is a beautiful flowering plant and the butterflies will sip the nectar off of this flowering plant now when you're building your butterfly garden you want to make sure you have flowers of all sorts of shapes and all sorts of sizes to make sure you can accommodate for a bunch of different kinds of butterflies your host plant that's gonna be the main that's really what's going to draw your butterflies to your garden to lay those eggs caterpillars will only feast off of this plant butterflies don't go to just about any flower preferably wild native flowers though singing two types of plants to plant a butterfly garden plant yep for the caterpillar yes and connect your plant for the butterflies excellent timing I think we should get Flint and let's get plan C great we're just gonna start making our hole so we can put this plant in here so as I see it you push down we push down and then up making sure we get some dirt oh look do you wanna try it [Music] thank you Miss Natalie for being a great butterfly expert and showing us how to throw a butterfly garden thank you for coming it was great [Applause] you