Live Butterfly Garden

A coworker told me about Insect Lore and the Live Butterfly Garden and how much her family enjoyed it. She highly recommended it, so I bought a kit for my kids. My entire family enjoyed the experience. Watching the transformation is amazing! Although we missed all the butterflies emerge, it was so much fun to let them go. My kids were thrilled that they stayed on their hands and flapped their wings before flying away. I have some amazing pictures we'll treasure. About two months after I bought my kit from Amazon, WalMart had some (packaged differently) on closeout. I bought all four of them! Three I kept for myself to give away as gifts and the remaining one a coworker snatched up.

Another positive thing worth mentioning is my experience with Insect Lore directly. My kit was missing the certificate for the live caterpillars and all I needed to do was send a check to the company for the shipping (which you'd have to do anyway) along with the UPC barcode from the box and I received my package. Their customer service department was great!

My daughter recieved this as a gift and I was pretty skeptical, but lo and behold -- we successfully raised all ten caterpillars and released them as adult butterflies. You don't need to feed or interact with the caterpillars: they come in transparent sealed containers with their own food. This means that kids can't play with them (my daughter was disappointed that her new pets couldn't walk on her fingers) but also means that you do not need to deal with the mountains of caterpillar poop that they produce.

When they pupate, you open the containers and pin the lids (where they instinctively attach themselves) inside the pavillion. Everything the insructions say will happen does, in fact, happen, and within a week or so your beautiful painted lady butterflies emerge. We kept ours for a few days and then set them free -- a satisfying experience from start to finish.

The whole system is extremely well thought out and the instructions are clear. Be sure to visit Insect Lore's web site, because it's full of helpful information and tips -- our pupas were wiggling and rocking alarmingly, and their FAQs anticipated the question and explained why they do that.

My only quibble is that the sugar water solution we fed to the butterflies tended to soak through the floor of the pavilion, making a sticky mess -- we had to put an old towel underneath. Otherwise, this was a smashing success and my kid can't wait to order another batch of caterpillars.

Pretty easy to do. requires a temperate environment not in direct sunlight. The kids loved it and had a great time when they shared it at daycare. [...]

we paired with with the "from caterpillar to butterfly" book.

Be aware that you have to send or fax in the certificate. It is odd that the refills [...] from insect lore essentially cost as much as the original product. [...]

I will say I was concerned that when the caterpillars first arrived they were pretty sluggish to the point where I thought some might have been dead. After about 2 days it was obvious all 5 were alive. 9 days after arrival we had them hanging off the top of the container the caterpillars came in. About 9 days after that we had 3 of the 5 butterflies. The next day at daycare the other 2 came out of their chrysalises. Now we're feeding them sugar water until we release them in a few days.

Obviously the caterpillars can't be packed in the box, but they shouldn't be an extra cost. There should be a paid card to send in when you're ready for them.

My main complaint is that the information is sketchy. A more informative child-friendly booklet should be included. Also the butterflies do poop red liquid which is pretty gross for very small kids. The white mesh cage looks really bad with all those bloody-looking smears on it. My 7 year old was okay with it when I explained it was "special butterfly poop" but my 5 year old, the nominal owner of the butterflies, lost interest quickly when the treehouse was no longer pretty.

There is nothing more extraordinary than the experience of taking care of "a life" & setting it free. My 5-year-old has learned something quite valuable through this toy, which is well made. We'll be able to use it again for several more summers.

Also, of the 10 caterpillars we received, 9 became butterflies and flew away, while 2 returned to our garden and lingered for a day. We even had a smaller butterfly with a bent wing, whom we thought may not be able to fly away very well, but it flew-off just as easily as the others did...a very touching moment, which became a lesson in life my daughter may never forget.