Experiencing childhood through my daughter’s eyes is a unique gift. Education is an invaluable piece of childhood and just like every parent out there, I try to incorporate unique activities to make learning fun and engaging! If we can instill a love of learning in children, I believe that will serve them well all throughout their life… since learning never becomes irrelevant! We started having “Science Saturdays” simply to help guide me in finding fun and educational activities for my daughter. Being an active learner, making memories and helping make hard things easier to learn are some of goals behind the “Science Saturday” idea. And not to say that Science Saturday doesn’t fall on any day of the week, but the idea is to incorporate a fun learning experience into the week!

Butterfly Activity for Kids

I always keep my eye out for fun and unique educational activities and one day an amazon advertisement came up for a butterfly growing kit. We have been playing with a Kiwi Co Butterly kit for several months and I thought this would be perfect activity for Spring!

How the Butterfly Kit works

I ordered the Insect Lore Butterly Growing Kit from amazon which came with a voucher to order the caterpillars. Now, to be transparent, I am not very into… bugs, especially in the house. But this kit did come with a cage and a plan…so we gave it a try!

The way the activity works is you receive your kit with the butterfly supplies and then go online to redeem your voucher to have the caterpillars ordered. It cost about $8.00 to have the caterpillars shipped to our home. They arrived in a plastic container inside a cardboard box a few days later.

The instruction set for the activity is wonderful, so I just followed a long! I set the caterpillar container out in a spot without too much sun or a draft. Next, my daughter and I checked on them! The container came with five caterpillars… sadly one did not make it. So we had four grow and grow and after a few days crawl to the top of container and create their cocoon.

The first one started a day or two before the last three. So we waited until the last three cocoons became hardened. The next part of the activity is a little tricky and the container cup is quite disgusting at the end. I gently took off the lid, set inside the log stand and put in the butterfly cage! Maybe if your child is older they could do this part of the activity, but I thought my two year old transferring the caterpillars wouldn’t be in their best interest!

Waiting for the Butterflies to Appear!

And then we watched and waited! I saw the first butterfly appear just as I was starting to think that nothing was going to happen. Out of the four cocoons, the one that had emerged first was the one I wasn’t sure was going to make it because the cocoon ended up resting on the bottom of the crate.

Over the next day and a half we saw the three other butterflies appear! I was hoping we would see them emerge from the cocoon but we missed that part! Such a fun kid activity and a great way for kids to see the change happen for themselves. It is a wonderful toddler activity as well, my daughter is nearly three and definitely was interested and saw the transformation!

What we learned!

The activity kit also comes with a package of wildflower seeds, which we planted to attract more butterflies! We took the butterflies to the farm and set them free! They needed a little encouragement to leave their home, but it was special to see them fly away! Two butterflies flew away and the other two we settled on a some leaves to let them find their way.

This was a special activity because it actually was over the course of weeks, showing my daughter and reminding myself, that growth and change take time. We looked for the good and were excited for the future together! If you have any ideas for fun kid activities just let me know! Keeping a toddler entertained can be a busy day!

“You don’t just wake up and become the butterfly-Growth is a process.” Rupi Kaur