Order a butterfly kit in the spring and let your kids watch the caterpillars change into butterflies while they journal all about it!
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POST UPDATED ON 3/11/22
Springtime is one of my favorite times of the year (minus the allergies, of course). I love seeing all the new life: buds on the trees, flowers poking up through the dirt and baby animals. The minute it’s warm enough for my kids to start playing outside without a jacket and shoes, you can find them in our yard, digging in the dirt, catching bugs and chasing butterflies. This year, we decided that a butterfly kit would be a fun way to welcome spring.
Ordering a butterfly kit was actually on our family’s summer bucket list last year but we didn’t get around to it. This year, I made sure to order it as soon as I thought the weather would stay spring-like because we are going to let the butterflies go after keeping them for a few days. The caterpillars shipped from a different company since Amazon doesn’t keep caterpillars in their warehouse *wink* and we received it a few days later.
The kids had been anxiously waiting for their caterpillars to come and were so excited to open up the package. We received a cup of 5 caterpillars, which had all the food they would need in the cup, a mesh pop-up cage, instructions and an information booklet. The kids were fascinated by the tiny caterpillars and kept running over to the table to check on them throughout the day.
How To Start A Butterfly Journal
My oldest daughter is six and in kindergarten and she has been doing some different journals to help with her writing and observation skills. I decided it would be fun to give her her own little notebook/journal that she could document the changes she noticed each day. I gave her the blank notebook, some stickers (butterflies of course) and markers and helped her get her journals set up with one page for each day. I’ve loved watching her pull it out each day, check on the caterpillars and write down what she sees, complete with pictures. (You could also help your child make their own mod podge notebook.)
After 5 days you could see that the caterpillars were already bigger than they were. (They are eating most of the day so it’s not surprising. It reminded me of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.) From this point, the caterpillars started forming their chrysalises about 2-5 days later.
After about a week, the butterflies started emerging and it was pretty amazing! We fed them for a couple of days on pieces of fruit and then we let them free. My kids loved the whole experience of doing a butterfly kit and journal and can’t wait to do it again!
In the meantime, I would love for you to check out all the spring themed posts for this month’s Inspire My Creativity link party.
What’s your favorite part about spring?
12 Comments
We did a butterfly kit when my kids were younger. I love the journal idea to go with it!!
I love these cute ways of to get the kids involved and having them do crafty ideas. I'll have to look into the butterfly kits. Looks like a fun time with the little ones
This is on my bucket list this summer! Our friends did it last year and we were lucky enough to be visiting and saw how fun it was!
What a great idea! My daughter would love this.
What a fun idea! My kids are older, but I think that they would really love this. I've never heard of a butterfly kit before, but it looks like so much fun!
Great idea! I know my daughter has studied butterflies in school but this looks more hands-on. Visiting from Inspire My Creativity party.
I love this idea! I've been wanting to do this with my own kiddos, I should order one soon!
We've done the butterfly kit! It's so fun!
I am going to try this out with the grandkids – of course I just love butterflies.
What a fun way to learn. I love using crafting as a learning tool.
This looks so fun! I think I'll be adding it to our summer bucket list this year, my kids would love it.
This looks like such a fun idea and makes me want to homeschool.