Praying Mantis

Most homeschoolers order caterpillars and watch them metamorph from a caterpillar to a cocoon to a beautiful butterfly. Well, we've done that plenty of times so Kaleb and I decided to order praying mantis cases. In researching these cases, we found out that they can hold around two hundred baby praying mantis'! Calculating that out, we should have about 600 praying mantis to 

release into the yard.

This has to be the most fascinating thing we have watched in quite some time. It was freaky weird watching these little babies inch themselves out of the case into a clump of babies. Once they dried, their exoskeleton turned a dark brown.

 We have found several egg cases but never knew how they actually escaped the case. Now we know. Once we witnessed these little guys emerging we promptly decided to give our neighbor one of the cases, released the ones that hatched, leaving the last one to finish it's gestation period.

It was pretty cool to see these amazing little creatures hatch.

I had to throw this one in.

Alex is pretty spoiled. We love him dearly.