Insect Lore – Caterpillars = Butterflies
I find nature and the cycle of life to be somewhat of a miracle. I am completely fascinated with the entire process, whether it be plant life, human life or insect life…or any life for that matter. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to review the Insect Lore live butterfly kit {$19.99}! I really can’t explain my excitement for it, I just remember receiving the package and I couldn’t wait until my daughter came home so we can get started.
Here’s the deal. It comes to you packaged very secured. You receive a plastic, see-through, container. At the bottom of the container it has some goopy looking stuff which is their “specialty diet”. Also in the container comes 4-5 teeny tiny baby caterpillars. When I say teeny tiny, I mean teeny tiny, like ant size. Sadly I was so excited about it, I didn’t get a picture of them when they first arrived. We carefully placed the plastic container on my daughters dresser and we watched them grow. They actually grow faster than I thought they would. You shouldn’t move them at all. As they get bigger, they climb up the container and secure themselves to this sheet that is attached to the lid. When they are up there, they form a J, which is really cool because I didn’t even know how this process worked so it was like I was learning right along with my daughter. That process took maybe about 10 days or so.
Once they are all attached {I think one of ours died, so we ended up with four} to the lid and have formed their cocoon (chrysalis) you can transfer the sheet to the reusable see-through mesh pop-up housing. We just pinned it to the side of the housing and watched and waited for them to turn into beautiful butterflies. After another few days to a week, our first butterfly popped out of his casing and started to flutter around. Shortly after that, the remaining three emerged from their cocoons and before we knew it, we had baby butterflies flying around in their little house.
It was such an amazing process! I am so glad that I was able to witness this and share it with my daughter. When the temperature is 55 degrees or higher, then you can release them. Please take note of that if you decide to purchase this and experiment with it in your own home. We did this at the tail end of winter so we had to nurse our butterflies until it was a safe temperature to release them. That was tough though because you had to feed them a sugar water on flowers or give them pieces of oranges. It was neat, but a lot more work than I would have liked to do the last month of winter. So, please, again, make sure that when you do this kit, your outside temperature is a minimum of 55 degrees so you can let them go shortly after they’ve made their appearance.
For more information and other fun kit suggestions, visit InsectLore.com. These kits would be great for fun {and inexpensive} summer learning!