I’ve often looked at butterfly kits where you get to keep caterpillars until they transform in chrysalises before emerging as butterflies. It’s just always seemed like an exciting thing to do with little ones, especially if they are fans of the book ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’!
Then we were sent Interplay’s My Living World Butterfly World and it was exactly the sort of thing I had been hoping for!
The kit!
Aimed at children over the age of 5 the set comes with everything you need to house butterflies and also comes with a book to help you know what to do, where to find your caterpillars or their eggs and what to feed them.
Unfortunately we found it very hard to find some caterpillar eggs… My Mum said this year there have been less butterflies which is probably why and for a moment I wondered if we wouldn’t be able to o the project. However, Interplay also sell pots of caterpillars for just such an occasion and although we didn’t get to collect our own we still managed to get to keep some!
The pot of 5 caterpillars comes in the post with their food stuck to the sides. We really enjoyed watching them munch their way through it, get fat and then very quickly do just as the book said and stick themselves to the roof with their silk and grow their chrysalises! It was very exciting watching them shake and wriggle as they did it!
The caterpillar pot was very interesting!
A few days later and as per the books instructions we transformed them to the butterfly house.
And then we waited!
And waited a bit more…
And then…
They emerged as butterflies! Painted lady butterflies!
So beautiful and the children got to see the whole process! What’s even better is that you can keep them for as long as you like by feeding them honey and water. You can even watch the whole process start all over again! Wedecided not to do that this time but we are keeping the house and booklet so that when we DO manage to find our own caterpillar eggs we can do it again!
We loved the caterpillars, watching the chrysalis process and then looking at the butterflies. We even really enjoyed the release which we did on the Wanstead flats after taking them into show at nursery. It’s such a fun thing to do and we left 5 happy butterflies in a really great environment for them to keep breeding.
This lovely kit allows your child to watch the life cycle of a caterpillar and it’s truly lovely! The kit is £12.99 and the caterpillars £9.50 so cheaper if you can find your own but still not so much it would break the bank! A lovely activity with a fantastic result!
The kits are aimed at children aged 5+.
We were sent the butterfly kit for the purpose of an honest review.
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What a lovely activity! We raised a moth from a chrysalis recently but wouldn’t have dared keep it for more than a day after it emerged as it was in a good old improvised cut-off bottle! Good to know there are ways out there of allowing a little extra interaction time with the children and to follow the whole process. They look like they enjoyed it!