I was so lucky to be able to be one of the parent chaperones on Abby's field trip to the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver. I didn't ride the bus with the kids but drove up with some of the other mom chaperones. Once all the buses arrived we found our group of kids and headed into one of the learning classrooms where we learned about some of the invertebrates we would see at the museum. The kids then got to go through some hands on stations before heading to the main area of the museum. The kids got to see some really nasty gigantic cockroaches, some camouflaged bugs, and a hermit crab. After the class was over we headed straight to see Rosie the Tarantula. Each of the kids in our group stood in line to hold Rosie. Abby was a little nervous but watched one of her friends do it and then had the courage to do it herself. I was so proud of her for holding that creepy tarantula. I would have never done that when I was her age. We then headed over to touch the horseshoe crabs and the sea stars. The kids really liked doing that. We definitely spent the most time in the indoor tropical rainforest where the butterflies were. We saw so many beautiful butterflies like the Monarch and the Owl Butterflies. We also saw a Malachite butterfly, a Luna Moth, the Green Banded Peacock, and a Blue Morpho. Abby and her friends saw a Blue Morpho with a damaged wing. The girls bent down to observe this sweet little butterfly when it jumped onto Abby's hands. She was so excited that she "caught" the butterfly even though they were not really supposed to hold them. She let me take her picture and then she carefully placed the butterfly on a leaf. That was definitely the highlight of the day for Abby. As we headed out we got to see lots of different kinds of chrysalises from different parts of the world. Some of them were even hatching which was neat to watch.
