Saturday, August 20, 2016

Flutterby Farm - Music Story

Hi. I’m Sara Lily. I’m helping Grandma with this blog. Grandma waited until this summer to write my six-year-old song. It’s not a birthday song. It’s a song about my butterflies. Daddy thinks it’s a rap.


God gave us milkweed plants and Grandma and I prayed for butterflies. Then Mommy and I found Monarch butterfly eggs! Grandma went to the Dollar Store and bought containers big enough for milkweed leaves. Grandpa found netting and rubber bands and we made a Flutterby Farm.
How to raise butterflies

Mommy turned my old fish tank into a big Flutterby Farm and I decorated it with stickers.
How to raise butterflies

Now Mommy and I look for butterfly eggs on the bottom of milkweed leaves. We pick the leaves and put them on wet paper towels and put them in my Flutterby Farm.
How to raise butterflies


A few days later the eggs hatch. You need a magnifying glass to see baby caterpillars. They eat and eat and grow.
How to raise butterflies

Milkweed leaves get dry, so we pick new ones for them to eat. Mommy wraps the stem of each leaf in a wet paper towel. The caterpillars eat and eat and get too big for their skin. They wiggle out of it five times. They grow pretty big. And they make an awful mess!
How to raise butterflies

Finally the caterpillars crawl to the top of the Flutterby Farm and make a silk button. Sometimes they attach it to the wall, sometimes to the netting. They hang from the button and wiggle out of their skin again. Now they are a green blob.
How to raise butterflies

A couple weeks later a butterfly pops out! We take butterflies outside and carefully put them on a milkweed plant. We carry them on a stick so they can hang upside down. We don’t want to hurt their wings.
How to raise butterflies

After their wings dry out and they fix their tongue, they fly away. But they love the milkweed plants God gave us and come back and lay eggs. Last summer we raised 23 Monarch butterflies.

Sara Lily

From the album “Silly or Celebratory – Songs for Sara Lily” this video is scrolling playback of the song.
You can get print (PDF) and/or digital (MusicXML™) sheet music for Flutterby Farm.
Flutterby Farm
Click here for print sheet music.
Flutterby Farm
Click here for digital sheet music.
(MusicXML™ is the standard open format for sharing digital sheet music. 
Check the help files in your music notation app for directions on importing MusicXML™ files.)



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