Over the last few weeks we have been 'growing butterfly's' when my brother in law saw the national trust butterfly observatory kit on sale in Sainsburys for £7.00 he snapped them up, one for my niece and one for Harry.
The kit comes with a net, instruction manual and a code to order your live caterpillars from the Internet. This was really easy to do and they arrived within 5days of ordering.
When they arrive they are tiny specks in a jar which is filled with what looks like hard sand.
The kids loved watching the tiny little caterpillars make tiny little movements around the jar.
I could not believe how quickly these little caterpillars actually grow, we would go to bed and get up the next morning and they would of visibly grown.
You can watch as they eat and fatten up, and spin there webs ready to cocoon.
It takes roughly 1 week for them to get into the cocoon and then 1 week for them to come out as fully grown butterfly's.
We were so lucky to be able to watch one of them emerge from there cocoon, it was brilliant to see and i caught it on video, all be it a little blurred.
Harry loved waving at the butterfly's and releasing them in our garden when they were all grown.
I'm sure kids of all ages would love to do this, it was just brilliant too see everyday, don't be alarmed about the 'bleeding' when they emerge, it looks terrible but its apparently just sort of 'ink' from the colour of there wings.
Sadly one of ours didn't cocoon hanging up, so we placed him on the floor of the net as advised but again sadly he didn't emerge fully and died :( i was gutted.
Ive put together this little video of the pictures and video i took of the 2 weeks that they were with us. Its 7mins long so i apologise for the length and also, the background music, Gareth choose, he thought it was fitting!!
I cant recommend this enough, i already want to get another one to watch.
Have you ever 'grown your own butterflys' ?
Love Lucy x
wow this looks like so much fun! Def. going to get one for Jared when he's a bit older, I know for a fact now that he would just try and eat the poor little critters! xxx
ReplyDeletethey are amazing to watch! Harry would of attempted the same if it wasn't on a high shelf half of the time, and then the net was hung in the conservatory and just taken down every now and again for him to have a nosy at :) he seems to enjoy watching them though x
DeleteI'm not too keen on worms, even if they do transform into gorgeous butterflies! Think I'll take little one to the butterfly park instead :)
ReplyDeleteJust to let you know that I have nominated you as 1 of my 11 for the Liebster Award. Ax
http://all-in-onemum.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/nominated-for-liebster-award-little-ol.html
aww brilliant thank you :) x x
DeleteI haven't but it does look fab, will have to do it with Jacob when he's a bit older! x
ReplyDeletei would definitely recommend it :) was great to watch x x
Delete