Insect Lore Deluxe Butterfly Garden With Live Cup of Caterpillars and Feeding Habitat Kit

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Spring is a pretty big deal over here. After a long, cold winter, there's nothing quite like seeing the first signs of green pop up everywhere. Signs of life! Every year, my children and I do a spring project together. Last year, we did an egg hatch project and watched chicks grow up into egg-laying chickens. We've been lucky enough to eat many of the eggs they've laid since they went to go live on our friend's homestead up the street. This year, we did a caterpillar-to-butterfly project! This was such a wonderful learning experience and a fun way to welcome spring! We raised Painted Lady Butterflies. So many people have asked where we got our kit, and the truth is, a local homeschooling mom here organizes a group order every year so we just went though her. I did some digging though and found out you can order your own caterpillar kits on Amazon! Here are a couple of options that contain everything you need for the project, including the actual caterpillars:

Insect Lore Deluxe Butterfly Garden with Live Cup of Caterpillars and Feeding Habitat Kit

Insect Lore Deluxe Butterfly Garden Gift Set with Live Cup of Caterpillars Habitat

In nature, only about 5% of caterpillars make it to butterflies. With this little caterpillar-to-butterfly project however, if they are cared for properly, anywhere from 70-90% will become butterflies. The success rate was accurate for us as we ended up releasing eight butterflies at the end of our project, out of our original ten caterpillars.

Teeny Tiny Caterpillars

Our caterpillars arrived in teeny tiny containers filled with food for them to eat. When I say tiny, of my gosh I mean it! I wish we had taken their original measurement, but they must have been a half inch or so at the very most. Caterpillars grow very, very fast! Once we noticed this, we began taking their measurements every time we cleaned out their little containers. They grew about an inch every two or three days! Because of how much the caterpillars eat, their jars fill with poop rather quickly! As well, they are constantly practicing making the silk webbing that they'll need for the chrysalis stage, so all this needs to be cleared out for them to thrive. As well, when caterpillars grow their skin does not grow with them. Instead, they are constantly forming new skin and shedding the old. So all that waste needed to be cleaned out as well. Needless to say, caterpillars make quite the mess! ;)

My kids also decided to name the caterpillars upon their arrival, and we labeled each container so we could keep track of their progress. They had fun naming their caterpillars whatever their hearts desired ("Optimus Prime" and "Tutankhamen", to name a couple).

Caterpillar-To-Butterfly Journals

To keep track of all their observations, my children made these adorable journals.

Each time they noticed something new, and each time they cleaned out the containers, they either drew a picture or wrote a little something about their observation. My 7 year old daughter preferred to write; my 5 year old son preferred to draw, although he always dated the top of the page. :)

My children were free to record whatever they wanted in their journals! We are very relaxed homeschoolers, and at this point I would rather they fall in love with learning than be forced to do everything by the rules. So we just crafted our journals together, and then I offered suggestions on what types of things they might want to look for and record. They did so well, and they learned a ton throughout the process. Once again I am convinced that it is so valuable to see these things happen up close and personal! Not just reading about things, but actually doing those things!

The Chrysalis Stage

One of the coolest things is seeing a caterpillar slowly enter the chrysalis stage. One morning, we noticed that many of our caterpillars were hanging upside down in a J-shape from the tops of their containers. This meant they were ready to enter their chrysalis. My kids of course recorded this in their journals right away, and we knew that it was now very important not to disturb the caterpillars while their chrysalis were hardening.

As the chrysalis hardened, they shed their final layer of skin and revealed the iridescent shell that had formed underneath. Beautiful and otherworldly!

After allowing the chrysalis to harden a couple days, we hung them from the ceiling of our mesh butterfly house, and the wait for butterflies began.

Waiting…

Painted Ladies stay in chrysalis for about 8-12 days. A lesson in patience for young children, for sure. During this time, we used some of our favourite resources to learn whatever we could about caterpillars, and the metamorphosis in general.

Here is a list of some of the resources we used (for reference, my children are about 5 and 7 years old but many of these would be appropriate for children of older ages as well).

1. Exploring Nature With Children curriculum by Lynn Seddon. I have loved using this resource with my children for so many of our nature studies. I can't say enough good things about it. For this particular study, the curriculum has a fantastic caterpillar unit, as well as a butterfly unit! We used both throughout the course of our project.

2. Let's Read And Find Out Science: From Caterpillar To Butterfly by Deborah Heiligman The metamorphosis of a caterpillar to butterfly, as told through storytelling. 'Let's Read And Find Out Science' is one of my favourite series for younger children. Perfect for the primary years and an excellent starting point for many scientific concepts!

3. The Handbook Of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock This is what I like to refer to as the "bible" of nature study. Although my children are a touch young for it to be used by them independently, I enjoy reading it myself and translating into child-friendly language. There is such a wealth of information in this book (it is HUGE) and for that reason it has a permanent spot on our nature shelf at home. Several pages dedicated to caterpillars and butterflies, as well as moths. You can literally look up anything in this book, whether it be about trees, or animals, or weather, or types of moss. The possibilities are endless.

4. Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman I feature this book quite often on my Instagram account. It is so pretty. We turn to this book as a guide of sorts for our nature journaling. Beautiful illustrations, and nature facts scattered throughout the pages.

The Butterflies Emerge!

Our first butterfly emerged after about 8 days in chrysalis. We had just returned home from our homeschool choir performance for Mother's Day, and were shocked to see a beautiful painted lady butterfly hanging from the ceiling of the mesh butterfly house!

One thing to note is that the emergence happens very fast. We missed the first several of our butterflies emerge, and finally caught sight of the fifth or sixth one as it was breaking free of its chrysalis. Even then, we only caught the tail end of it. If you are really set on seeing one actually emerge, I suggest moving the butterfly house to a central area right around the time they are supposed to come out, to give yourself a better chance. (The rest of the time it should actually be put somewhere that they won't be disturbed at all). It takes only seconds so the likelihood of missing them emerge is pretty high! I have also seen some people set up a time lapse camera, but I've never done this myself so I'm not sure of the logistics.

Even though we missed many of them actually emerge, we were able to witness the important "drying off" period where the butterfly hangs for several hours to dry its wings. During this time, the wings go from looking crumpled up and wrinkled, to filling with blood and stretching out to form the beautiful vibrant-coloured wings we all know.

Flowers, Oranges, and… Gatorade?

We decided to wait a few days to release our butterflies all together, once they had all emerged. This took a few days since all of them entered chrysalis at different times! During this stage, we provided our butterflies with food to eat so they could continue growing strong before their release into the natural world! Our caterpillar-to-butterfly project coincided with prime dandelion season here, so naturally we picked a ton of those and brought them in for our butterflies. They loved them! It was amazing to watch them sip the nectar through their straw-like proboscis. Another food we used to feed our butterflies were fresh, sliced oranges. My kids enjoyed snacking on their own sliced oranges at the same time they watched the butterflies sip from theirs. Kind of like sharing snack time with their butterfly friends! And finally; we were told to brush some Gatorade alongside the mesh walls of our butterfly house. I thought this sounded odd, but after reading more about it I learned that Gatorade has a similar composition to that of nectar! And sure enough, the butterflies did enjoy walking the walls of the butterfly house and sipping the little droplets of Gatorade from the mesh.

The Butterfly Release

We waited for a warm day to release our butterflies, once all of them had emerged, but not before they started mating and laying eggs in their house! Haha! I wish I could say I was joking but I'm completely serious. We spotted them mating, and within a couple days we had piles of tiny green eggs on the leaves we had been putting into our butterfly house. We debated on keeping the eggs and starting the process all over again, but seeing as we're expecting a baby of our own (any day now!) we thought better of that idea and decided to place the egg-covered leaves into a safe spot in the park where we released the butterflies.

Releasing our butterflies felt sort of like a special gift to the Earth. We felt a little sad to see them go, but also happy to see them be released into the natural world. We have been wondering about them ever since we set them free! Have they lain more eggs? Have new generations of caterpillars hatched? Could there possibly be beautiful butterflies flitting around right now, that are from the same family line as the ones we released? So many beautiful, magical things to wonder about!

It was very cool to witness the entire life cycle up close like this! If you're looking for a fun spring project to do with your kids, I'd highly recommend it.

Finally, I found this lovely Waldorf summer verse that seemed fitting for our butterfly release. Perhaps you'd like to use it for your own butterfly study!

Dancing among the flowers
With dainty painted wings
Flits the golden butterfly,
Joy to my heart she brings!
Stopping only for a rest
To sip the morning dew
Then flits and flutters off again
Butterfly, I can't catch you!