Release of the Butterflies

For Christmas, Elina got a really cool gift from her 3rd grandma (my other "mom" in New York, MC, who took me under her wing when she was my youth group leader while I was in middle school) called the Insect Lore Live Butterfly Pavilion. It comes with a mesh enclosure and you send in a form to get live caterpillars that will turn into Painted Lady Butterflies.

First you receive 2 covered cups that have 10 caterpillars total. The bottoms of the cups already have the food they need, so all you do is watch them eat and grow until they form chrysalides. This was an amazing process. The day after we received them, they were already twice the size they originally were. We couldn't believe it. Every day they grew and made silk and pooped. The kids checked on them constantly to see how big they had gotten and to see what they were up to. After a week or so, they started becoming chrysalids.

At this point, we had to open the lids and take the chrysalides out and attach them to the side of the mesh enclosure. This was interesting. We did this while the kids were in bed because we knew Eli would not be able to help himself and he would touch them or poke them or, worse yet, crush them. Chrysalids will start shaking if they sense danger and there was this one chrysalid that kept shaking while B tried to get rid of some excess silk (which the instructions told us to do). It looked really freaky.


After another week or so, the butterflies came out of the cocoons. We were SO sad that we didn't get to see them actually coming out of the cocoons. We kept missing it. When B and I got up one morning, there were already 5 butterflies. Then the kids checked it later on...and 20 minutes later, there were 2 more! How did we miss this?? Then the other 3 came out while we were at the hospital delivering Evalyn. Talk about timing! So we put orange slices in the enclosure to feed the butterflies and on Easter Sunday we released the butterflies. We had the kids put on their wings and we all went outside for the "ceremony." Unfortunately, Eli got really scared when he saw all the butterflies flying out. Soon after we started, he ran to my mom and sat in her lap for the rest of the time. Elina, on the other hand, had a great time. In the video, you can see Eli's concerned look as the butterflies are flying away.


There was one last butterfly who didn't want to leave. We tried to goad him out, but he wouldn't go. So I had Elina put her fingers down to let the butterfly walk on her hand. Surprisingly, Elina agreed to do it! (When we went to the butterfly exhibit at the zoo a few months ago, she refused to touch the butterflies, but I guess she's gotten over it.)



We had a fun 2-3 weeks with these caterpillars and butterflies. I would definitely recommend this to preschoolers and school-age children. Every day the kids wanted to find out if anything had changed and Elina would journal about them, too. Even Eli was interested in seeing the caterpillars and butterflies. But I wouldn't recommend leaving toddlers alone with the butterflies in the enclosure. Eli's favorite thing was poking at the butterflies on the side of the enclosure and sometimes he'd shake the caterpillar cups without really being aware of it. So we really had to be careful with letting Eli handle things. Anyway, it was a fun few weeks and we will definitely order more caterpillars in the future since the mesh enclosure is reusable.