Jonah received a butterfly garden from Grandma and Grandpa’s Santa for Christmas last year. You should have seen how excited he was to get this gift. Lots of jumping and excitement and begging to get it out. We told him that we would not be able to get the butterfly garden out until spring time because we didn’t want to nurse the butterflies only to have them die in the cold.
Jonah asked about every other week from Christmas until April, when we finally told him that the weather was now appropriate to do so.
We ordered the caterpillars online from the catalogue and they came a few weeks later.
We watched the caterpillars grow and eat in their jar and form their chrysalises. Once safely inside their chrysalides, we moved them to the butterfly keeper. We waited patiently for the butterflies to hatch out.
One morning, in May, Jonah came running into our bedroom, “Hey Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY! I saw the chrysalis moving in the butterfly garden!” So up we went to take a look. We saw that a few of the chrysalises were moving and about an hour later the first butterfly began to peek out!
After a few days, we had four out of the five butterflies fluttering in the habitat. We decided to release them when the weather was warm and the sun was shining. So, for about a week, we kept them inside and fed them fresh flowers and sugar water. (It rained for about a week straight.)
Then, one morning, the sun was shining and the weather was beautiful! We let two of the butterflies go before daycare and then waited a couple of days and released the other two.
Jonah and Lucy were blessed enough to have the butterflies land on their fingers as we released them into the wild.
I was blessed enough to get a photograph of one of them before it flew out into the wild blue yonder. 
Enjoy!
P.S. We hope to do this soon again. This was such a positive learning experience for all of us that we will hopefully be ordering more larvae in the near future.
Wow that’s cool!!! I didn’t know you could do that. I love how he was keeping an eye out for them to be ready! SO cute!
That is great! William and Matthew just received their caterpillars in the mail in the last few days. They will get to experience the same wonders. Glad you had fun with them. Kisses and hugs.
Sue,
I am glad that they got them. I bet they will have A LOT of fun watching the caterpillars change into butterflies.
Thanks again!
What beautiful photos! That first one is just gorgeous. Perhaps you’ve already planned this, but I bet Jonah would love having that photo in his room.
I hadn’t realized that they sold these kinds of things for kids! Now I have great ideas for my nieces.
I actually thought about getting the picture framed, but I didn’t think about hanging it in his room. That is a good idea which I think he would really enjoy!
Yeah, you can find them at Toys ‘R Us or Wal-Mart. It is definitely a change from the typical ant farm.
I bet your nieces would LOVE them.
That’s cool! My sister does praying mantises and releases them around her house in hopes they’ll help take care of all the ticks they have. The kids will sit and watch them for a while when they are little and hunting in the container.