The Butterfly Effect

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my privacy policy.

5.12.11

A lot has been happening around our recently with grandparents visiting for long periods of time (an awesome help to mom and dad!). My mom is a big gift giver to the kids and likes to get them little things to play with. Butterflies (or their larvae) came with her for her last visit. Wanting to do a special and fun project with H, my mom bought the Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden

The kit comes with just about everything you need to “grow” 10 butterflies. It takes about 4 weeks or so to complete all the steps. It was exciting to see H so interested in it…especially for Mathlete Hubby who is really into scientific stuff. She would come home each day and run over to see what was happening. Once the butterflies emerge from the cocoons, you feed them orange slices or sugar water until their wings are strong enough to fly.

The butterflies will sit in the netting with their wings together, vibrating, for a few days. This is how they prepare their wings for flying.

Last night, all of our butterflies were ready to fly so we had a small butterfly release “party” with our neighbors, ages 4 and 7. Someone was very excited about the butterflies…

H did the honors of unzipping the container to release the butterflies.

We stayed out for awhile watching all of the butterflies fly away. Then, the kids got antsy so we decided to celebrate our butterfly success with cookies! (Don’t worry…we cooked these first!)