Introducing the enchanting Butterfly Garden, the perfect gift for curious little minds! This educational wonderland brings the captivating world of butterflies right into your home. Watch as your child’s eyes light up with excitement and wonder as they witness the magical transformation from caterpillar to butterfly.
With the Butterfly Garden, learning becomes an adventure! This captivating kit includes a reusable, collapsible habitat that allows children to observe the entire life cycle of butterflies up close. From the moment they receive their caterpillars to the day they release their beautiful butterflies into the wild, your child will be immersed in a world of discovery.
Not only does the Butterfly Garden provide endless entertainment, but it also offers a hands-on learning experience. As children care for their caterpillars, they’ll learn about the importance of responsibility and nurturing. They’ll witness the incredible process of metamorphosis, teaching them about the wonders of nature and the delicate balance of life.
This brilliant gift falls under the category of educational gifts for children, making it an ideal choice for birthdays, holidays, or any special occasion. It encourages curiosity, fosters a love for nature, and sparks a lifelong interest in science. Plus, it’s a fantastic way to spend quality time together as a family, observing and learning about these magnificent creatures.
Give the gift of wonder and education with the Butterfly Garden. It’s a present that will captivate young minds, inspire their imagination, and create memories that will last a lifetime. Let the magic unfold and watch as your child’s love for nature takes flight!
Vadim & Karina –
This kit is great for kids 3 and up. It includes everything they would need to watch caterpillars turn into butterflies. The caterpillars are not included but a voucher for them is included, just the shipping fee would need to be paid. There’s a fun activity booklet included which helps the kids track the progress of the caterpillars changing and has some other fun activities like addition. This kit is a great present for a budding and curious child.
Alison –
The children loved the gift and this is the second time they have been bought this item
MilkyLata –
TIPS TO AVOID DEAD BUTTERFLIES
This is a wonderful gift and children are much more likely to remember with fondness a natural wildlife experience like this, rather than a toy. It is easy to keep the net for an annual butterfly project too, and it’s always magical to see them emerge.
1. Read all of the literature and view videos beforehand, and then read it all again. In fact, read a few books about insects in general, they are ace! Seriously, you need to not be in a position where the caterpillars turn up and you’re scrambling around looking for the leaflet which somehow has disappeared from the box. Also you don’t want to look like a bumbling amateur in front of kiddies.
2. Don’t leave the care of vulnerable darling insects to kids. This all needs the care and dedication of an adult, and if you’re not wringing your hands in anxiety over the fate of these tiny creatures at least twice a day you’re not putting the time in.
3. Put a stiff tray under the butterfly enclosure to keep it stable when you move it around. It is a flimsy net and the bottom warps, resulting in pupae rolling around on the floor unless you put the entire thing on a hard surface.
4. Load up your cardboard chrysalis stand with a few dried peas to give it some weight and mechanical hardness, otherwise the card tends to fatigue and your carefully balanced cup lid laden with chrysalids ends up falling flat onto the enclosure floor.
5. Don’t pin the chrysalis cup lid to the side of the netting. Opening and closing the zip on the lid results in the entire enclosure warping or shaking and flinging your precious animals around. Use the chrysalis holder, or blue-tack the holder to the ground leaning against the net.
6. Put a paper towel or tissue at the bottom of the enclosure – that meconium gets everywhere!
7. If you see any traces of mould in the substrate in your cup of caterpillars while they are still in the feeding up stage, carefully remove the lid after scaring the larvae onto the bottom of the cup, and scoop out any mould with a plastic spoon. This mould will spread really quickly because of the low ventilation and high humidity of the cup, and kill the caterpillars. The caterpillar food is meant to be sterile when it arrives but the hatchlings themselves may have spores on them which can grow into a big mould problem.
8. Don’t remove any chrysalides that you think are dead. They probably aren’t. Just put them on the floor of the enclosure and leave them alone. If they make it, great, if they don’t, it’s the circle of liiiife.
9. Don’t bother keeping the butterflies and feeding them on nectar (a heaped teaspoon of sugar in 100 ml of water soaked into tissues on a saucer) for longer than a day or two, unless they are not healthy enough to survive in the wild and you might get a kick out of keeping them. They really prefer being outdoors and risk damaging wings if they are kept in the enclosure for a long time, and they get nectar all over themselves and it’s terrifying to watch.
10. I have made this sound like a difficult, harrowing and thankless task. It is actually not hard, and is incredibly rewarding to witness a miraculous natural event with your kids, Enjoy!
Engelchen –
Ich habe mit das Set geholt, da ich selbst einfach mal neugierig bin, wie so ein Lebenszyklus eines Schmetterlings abläuft. Kleiner Wermutstropfen: man hat die Raupen nicht mit bei, sondern muss mit einem in der Verpackung befindlichen Gutschein die Raupen in England bestellen und dafür nochmal Porto zahlen.
Achtung: Für die Zahlung muß ein Paypalkonto oder eine Kreditkarte vorhanden sein!
Bei der Bestellung der Raupen gibt man dann den Tag an, an dem sie verschickt(!) werden sollen. Der Versand dauert ca. 5-7 Tagen. Sind die Raupen dann da, hat man ca 7-14 Tagen, bis sie sich verpuppen und man sie mit Hilfe der kleinen Pappaufsteller in das – in der Grundpackung vorhandene – Habitat umziehen läßt. Eine Erklärung für die gesammte Zeit ist in mehreren Sprachen vorhanden. Und man erhäkt zwischendurch auch einige Mails mit Hinweisen in deutscher Sprache.
Ich fand das Leben der Raupen (sogar Streitigkeiten untereinander, sowie regelmäßiges Teilhäuten) sehr spannend und habe nun seit einer guten Woche die Puppen im Habitat. Nun warte ich begierig jeden Tag drauf, das ein Schmetterling schlüpft. Damit die kleinen gleich am Anfang zu fressen haben und nicht ein paar Stunden hungern müssen (was ihnen nicht gut tut!) habe ich nun auch kleine Blumen im Habitat stehn (ausgesucht nach intensiven Recherchen im Internet was diese Raupenart für Blüten braucht).
Bitte denkt dran die Schmetterlinge nicht zu lange im Habitat zu belassen sondern sie zeitig in die Natur zu entlassen.
Das Habitat ist mehrfach verwendtbar, die Becher, in denen die Raupen geliefert werden und in denen sie wachsen würd ich eher nicht wieder verwenden, da in ihm die Nahrungsreste sowie Kot liegt. Raupen kann man jederzeit über die Website des Herstellers nachbeziehen.
Raupen werden aber NUR während einer bestimmten Zeit verschickt, in denen weder der Transport noch die anschließende Umgebung für die Schmetterlinge zu kalt ist! Es ist daher möglich, dass der Gtuschein z.B. im Dezember nicht eingelöst werden kann. Dann einfach im April erneut versuchen. Der Support des Herstellers reagiert nur in englischer Sprache! Wer also Fragen hat, sollte daher Englisch können. Die Anfrage in Deutsch ist kein Problem nur halt die Antwort kommt in Englisch.
moju –
Ca marche! Les 5 larves sont devenues des papillons, mes filles (de 4 et 9 ans) ont adore! Elle ont meme emmene la serre a l’ecole pour permettre a toute la classe d’observer les papillons. Cela permet aux enfants d’apprendre plein de choses sur la vie des papillons (tres bonne notice) et meme de les toucher. Elles en redemandent! En plus, c’est facile a realiser et vraiment fiable (par rapport a d’autres jeux sur le marche, je pense notamment aux triops qui eux demandent des conditions difficilement realisable a la maison)
Ceireod –
This is a wonderful little set and a special experience for kids to enjoy with the family, watching caterpillars grow into butterflies. I bought one for my daughter and her friend and they really enjoyed watching their caterpillars together and had a special release day when they were ready. Great value for money and great balance of fun and learning.
Arianna –
We tried to observe butterflies growing in a variety of different containers but it was a bust. Once we ordered this Butterfly Garden, everyone could safely observe the caterpillars throughout the entire process and set them free without any of their delicate wings being damaged. A great investment for one child or a classroom. A+++
Diana Tomescu –
Bellissima esperienza
Louise Dick –
I purchased this item with trepidation after reading the reviews that the code would not work in the UK and that caterpillars could not be redeemed with a USA code if you were sent the wrong box.
My daughter saved her pocket money for this after doing it at school, so we went ahead and purchased it. It arrived this morning. The leaflet inside has a special code that you enter either by post (with £2.99 to cover the shipping of the caterpillar larvae) or you can also enter it online and pay via paypal, which I did. It was VERY quick and easy, I can only assume that some people have been very unfortunate and have received USA stock by mistake, or that the newer stock is all UK butterfly garden boxes.
Anyway, I have paid the fee and eagerly await the caterpillars being despatched. You can only pick from a limited list of delivery dates so be prepared to wait at least a week or more for your caterpillars to arrive. ALSO – if you want to do this, eggs are ONLY AVAILABLE in the spring and summer months so be sure you order this item at the right time otherwise it will be useless until the next butterfly season!
The box only contains the butterfly net/house, a feeding pipette, and instruction booklet, as well as your unique code to redeem the caterpillars.
THIS IS MADE ABUNDANTLY CLEAR! I cannot understand the bad reviews from those intellectually challenged people who seem to think LIVE animals can be kept indefinitely on a shelf until they are sold. Caterpillars life cycle takes about 5 weeks so they would be dead and gone before the kits were sold! Of course they charge a handling fee to get you fresh larvae sent out. If people cant comprehend this basic fact, maybe they don’t have the requisite intelligence to be explaining life cycles to a child. Don’t be disappointed to find NO LIVE INSECTS in your kit! Sheeeesh! (eye roll)….
I will update this reviews when the larvae arrive!
27/07/13 – caterpillars arrived today. They are about 1cm long, black and hairy, and are in a small clear plastic cup with a lid and a cardboard sleeve that can be rotated around the cup to view the caterpillars. Already there are some silk like threads being spun at the bottom of the cup. Four of the caterpillars are very active and can clearly be seen crawling about and eating the thick jelly stuff at the bottom of the cup. The fifth caterpillar is alive but quite inactive and has not moved much. Some have even ventured to the underside of the cup lid.
31/07/13 – all five caterpillars are still alive, though the slow/inert one is still lying at the bottom of the cup not having moved much. They have more than trebled in size since they arrived, the largest one is now about 2.5 – 3cm long. The inside of the cup looks a bit gross now with all the caterpillar waste product (frass) and shed skins. since last night alone they are noticeably fatter; it’s amazing just how fast they grow, there can be a marked difference between day and night. In this warmer weather the process is, according to the booklet, much faster. I’m expecting the chrysalis’s to start forming over the next few days. At this point I’m hoping for 5 successful butterflies!
02/08/13 – 4 of the caterpillars are now hanging from the lid of the cup, one seems to be a bit more ahead of the others as it has already formed somewhat of a thick cocoon over itself, the others just look like they are hanging there. The fifth caterpillar is making its way to the top of the cup. I hope they all form cocoons at the same time as I don’t know what to do if some have not and some have, as the instructions say you should not open the lid until all are hanging from the top (you can introduce bacteria etc into their environment otherwise). Exciting!
05/08/13 – All five caterpillars made it into the cocoon stage, but one was hanging not from the lid but from another cocoon. We opened the lid as per instructions and cleaned away the silk strands and debris (this apparently can cause the butterflies to become entangled and have deformed wings if you don’t do this). The cocoon that was hanging from another cocoon, we have detached and laid on a paper towel at the bottom of the enclosure. The instructions say this is okay and it should still hatch out. We are now to wait for the cocoons to turn a very dark colour, and the butterflies are suppose to hatch the same day! This stage was quite yucky if I’m honest and may gross out a sensitive child, as there were ‘bits’ of old caterpillar skin and what looks like blood (its just ‘meconium’ according the booklet!). We now wait expectantly for our butterflies!
It is interesting to note that the cocoons were shaking quite violently on their own as we were doing this, apparently this is a defence mechanism! Very strange to see.
12/08/13 – First butterfly hatched out yesterday morning. We missed the actual event but it was sitting at the bottom of the enclosure. Have put fresh cut oranges and peaches in the net, as well as some fresh flowers sprayed with ‘nectar’ (sugar water) as per instructions. The second butterfly hatched this afternoon, and a third looks like it is about to emerge. We have taken lots of pictures. Two down, three to go!
13/08/13 – Two hatched out yesterday afternoon after writing my update. We actually caught the second one on video emerging from its cocoon – you have to be fast because once it starts, it’s out in about 5 seconds, it is not the slow process you might imagine! We were very lucky to catch it. A fair amount of red ‘blood’ drips from their back ends once emerged, so put your habitat on some newspaper.
This morning we released all four butterflies as the fifth one was not hatched yet. We got some lovely pictures – they are happy to sit on your fingers etc as you place them on the plants. My daughter was a bit teary for a while but after explaining that her new friends needed to be free to see the world etc and that they would come back and visit her if they could, she felt a bit better. The fifth butterfly hatched in the last two hours, so he will be released this afternoon, as I feel they should not be kept in the net any longer then necessary.
In summary this has been an amazing experience for both adult and child. The whole process from receiving larvae to releasing the butterflies took 17 days. I highly recommend this item, we are already thinking about doing it again next summer!