Raising Butterflies

Disclosure:  Safari Ltd provided me the Life Cycle of a Monarch Butterfly free of charge at my request.  Though I was offered this product for free, the opinions offered are my own and were not swayed by the free product.  This post also includes some affiliate links to Amazon for your convenience.

We have been raising butterflies every summer since S was old enough to walk.  As the daughter of a former science teacher, it's probably not a huge surprise that S adores bugs.  Butterflies are just so interesting - and to be honest, I just can't pass up an opportunity to hold one.  It's still rather like magic to me.  :)

Even at 20-some months, S was very intrigued by the process.  She would act out the lifecycle and visit with her caterpillars every day.  Though when she was this young, the rate at which they grew was a bit lost on her.  Here she is visiting with her caterpillars.  This set of caterpillars was from a science education company and there were 8 of them in that tiny little cup - so yes, I may have felt badly for them and upgraded them to the bigger house which you see below.  As a general rule, they are fine to be raised in the cup they arrive in.  :)

S was an avid bug handler, and had learned how to be gentle - and understood that you could not grab/touch the butterflies wings, so she was able to release them herself.  See what I mean?  Isn't this photo pure magic?  

Somewhere around 3, S was old enough to really learn about the life cycle of butterflies and to be able to notice the caterpillars' rapid change in size.  So I was thrilled when Safari Ltd. was willing to send us  one of their Safariology Life Cycle of a Monarch Butterfly sets.  Manipulatives are such a great teaching tool for children in general - and in this case, I really feel they are extra useful since handling caterpillars/chrysalides is likely to result in their death.

We have raised butterflies from several companies and have had success with all of them; here you see us using InsectLore's Live Butterfly Pavilion.  We generally get several uses out of their butterfly tent and order our "refill" caterpillars from whichever company is cheapest (often science education companies will run specials during the summer).

Here is S loving on her caterpillars right after they arrived this year.  She's made them a "snuggly nest".

They are soooo tiny when you first get them.  Almost cute, even.  Almost.

Here's where the manipulatives start coming in handy.  S got to touch and poke and handle the pretend caterpillars and eggs on the leaf (she is always sad that she can't handle the real ones) and then we compared the sizes.  She observed that the yellow pretend caterpillars were much bigger than her real caterpillars.

Two days later, we checked, and they were about the same size.  "Whoa!" exclaimed S.

She was even more surprised to find that the real caterpillars were bigger than the yellow pretend caterpillars just two days after that.

Not long after, we got to watch as one by one the caterpillars made their chrysalides.  Here S is comparing the model to the real things.  The model is of a Monarch Butterfly and the butterflies we raise are Painted Lady butterflies - so there are differences which S noted.

When the first butterfly hatched, S eagerly watched it pump its wings.  We've watched several videos of butterflies emerging (YouTube is great for this) and last year and this we were lucky enough to catch a butterfly emerging.  It happens really quickly.  Surprisingly so!  In both instances the butterflies emerged in just a few seconds.

A few days later (so long as you have warm weather), your butterflies are ready to be released.  They generally don't fly very far at first, so it was fun to watch them land on the plants and trees in our yard before moving on to the great wide world.

A little (touch free) snuggle before sending the butterfly on its way.

Between reading some great books (I'd really recommend this one)and playing with the Safari Ltd Life Cycle of a Monarch Butterfly, S is now a pro at explaining the butterfly life cycle.  I asked if she'd be willing to teach you all for the blog and she agreed, but was (adorably) nervous.  I love her little timid voice (and the hilarious mistake she makes) - she was a little intimidated to teach you guys!  :)

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If you haven't already, you can check out our Butterfly Small World here and our Make Your Own Butterfly Wings here!

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Simple Small Worlds: Butterfly World

You can read about our other Simple Small Worlds here:

Fizzing Hidden Ocean World

Froggy World

Insect World

Dinosaurs and Sticky Mud

Farm World

Dragon World

For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links.

I knew I wanted to make a second small world based off of our Insect TOOBcreatures, and since we love butterflies (and raise them every year!), what better world to make than Butterfly World?

Our Michaels store is constantly running specials on their faux flowers, so I waited until these brightly colored gerber daisies were two for $1 and bought several in purple, white, yellow, and pink.  S loves having different sensory materials in her worlds, so I settled on using some fresh green grass and adding a little pond.  And of course we used our Dollar Tree gems, because, well, we almost always use our Dollar Tree gems.  :)

At first, I cut the stems of the flowers to the height I wanted.  But then I saw S bending the stems and realized that because they had wire inside and I could bend them to the correct height!  Thank goodness for S!  So I bent the remaining flowers and stabilized them with tape throughout the world.  I left an opening in the center for the butterfly's pond.

 A quick trip to the backyard with a grocery bag yielded the grass necessary and we added a few drops of blue liquid watercolors to make the pond especially blue (you could instead use blue food coloring).  S required gems both in the pond and randomly scattered throughout the world.  It was then ready to be populated by our guests - a few creatures from our Safari Ltd Insect TOOB and one rogue Monarch (from a really cool Safari Ltd Life Cycle of a Monarch Butterfly set we used to learn about Raising Butterflies).

S immediately set to work storytelling, as is always the case with our small world set ups.  The butterflies in Butterfly World lived on the flowers and needed to make beds because they were sleepy.  They also needed to bathe in the pond (there's a lot of sleeping and bathing that goes on in our small worlds - they are for sure recurring themes).

The butterflies would fly down into the grass, gather wingfuls of it, and transfer them to the flowers.

They also loved including a gem or two in each of their beds.  To decorate, of course.

Blue butterfly was pretty serious about constructing her bed/nest.  I was so impressed with how much these flowers held - there were 2-3 gems and a giant pile of grass on most of them, and there was no bending or falling!

Blue butterfly really has a serious bed happening there.  I bet that fluffy grass is extra cozy.

S had so much fun with the grass - and after not too long, little X woke up from his nap.

And he also loved the grass!

Luckily he was content to sit with his own giant pile of grass for dumping and just observe all the nest/house building that was going on.

Once the butterflies were all content and sleeping soundly, S moved on to making houses for the "little buggy guys" that were in the world, lest they feel left out.

For more butterfly fun, check out our posts on Raising Butterflies and Making Your Own Butterfly Wings!

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Small World Floor Play: Nature and Insects

Our cherry tree was blooming so beautifully outside (which it does for only about 5 days before all the blooms are gone - tragic!), but it was freezing and stormy out.  I wanted us all to be able to enjoy the blooms, so I put together this larger scale small world on our splat mat with things I found in our backyard, some of our shells, and four of our larger figurines.  

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

The insects are from Wild Republic's Insect Collection Bagand the snake is from Safari Ltd.The snake is actually named "Mama Snake" and for several months when S was around 18 months old, Mama Snake was one of S's most coveted toys.  So much so, in fact, that S slept with Mama Snake at every nap time and at bedtime.  At least a dozen times, while catching the baby video monitor out of the corner of my eye, my heart would skip a beat seeing a giant snake laying next to my prone, sleeping child. :)

In addition to a branch of our beautifully blooming cherry tree, I gathered some fronds from ferns (they're anchored in playdough), some stones, and a piece of driftwood.

Once I got it all set up, S eagerly started playing with Mama Snake.

I'd wanted to do a larger world so that little X could also play and enjoy it.  He's been obsessed with getting INTO our small world bins of late, so I thought this would be something he'd enjoy - and he did!  He gravitated to the fern first and spent quite some time gently touching each of the fronds.

Next he spied Mama Snake and investigated her.

S started playing with the butterfly, flying her all around the little world.  Eventually she landed on the driftwood to rest.

X also examined the driftwood.

After awhile, the butterfly and Mama Snake were tired and they both decided to take a nap in the cherry tree branch.

S then began talking to the ant.  Apparently he needed to set up and decorate for a party, so she helped him move the shells to the driftwood.  I was also called upon to be a fellow decorator.

While S and Ant were busy decorating, X spent some time checking out the cherry blossoms.  He was careful not to wake the slumbering Mama Snake and butterfly.  :)

S is learning nursery rhymes at preschool (she goes twice a week for 2.5 hours) and thought that this big round rock looked like Humpty Dumpty!  Ant was not familiar with the nursery rhyme, so S recited it and acted it out for him with the big round rock starring as Humpty.

Like all the king's horses and all the king's men, Ant couldn't put Humpty together again!

Ant really has an eye for decor, I must say.  Here he's managed to wedge a smaller shell so that it's hanging down.  What a fancy party decoration he's setting up!

With all of us working as a team, we managed to get the driftwood decorated to S's standards.  Here she's giving our work a final inspection.

X is perhaps checking if butterfly is done with her cherry tree branch nap?

Finally, S asked if she could trim the ferns with her scissors to make some final party decorations.  She very carefully cut and arranged several fern leaves.

I thought they looked very pretty, so I had to take a photo of them (of course!).

Some final touches were added to the decor by cutting small blooming twigs.  Everyone was very happy with the beautiful party decorations created by Ant and S.

We had a lot of fun enlarging our small world play for this activity and it ended up being the perfect way to enjoy the effervescent cherry blooms!

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Simple Small Worlds: Insect World

You can read about our other Simple Small Worlds here:

Fizzing Hidden Ocean World

Froggy World

Farm World

Dinosaurs and Sticky Mud

Dragon World

Butterfly World

We are once again so excited to be reviewing another Safari Ltd product!  Today we're playing with another one of their brilliant TOOBS - the Insect TOOB.  Safari Ltd provided me with their Insect TOOB free of charge, but all opinions expressed in this post are my own and were not influenced by the free product.

One of the things that S and I find super fascinating about insects is their ability to walk on walls!  It's always so impressive to watch them scale the walls of whatever container we've placed them in for observation - so I wanted to bring that element into this small world.  To that end, I cut strips of contact paper and lined the inside walls of the world with it.  I flipped each strip sticky side up and used scotch tape along the edges to keep it in place.  It really added a cool element to the small world, I think.  (A roll of contact paper is around $5 and you can read about some other ways that we've played with it here, here, and here.)

Insects are everywhere, in all sorts of different environments, so this is a great small world to make with  gathered natural materials from the yard/surrounding areas of your house.  Whether you live in a forest like us, or near a beach, or in a big city, a rural area, or a desert - any of the materials you find outside are things that make up your insects' environment!

For the materials in the bin, I took a walk around the perimeter of our house and gathered interesting supplies.  I clipped a branch off one of our Western Red Cedar trees, grabbed some cool looking large stones, and a patch of moss.  

Though you can absolutely use dirt from outside (or grass or whatever other material!), I like to "recycle" our old coffee grinds into "dirt" because I feel like the grounds are less messy and look prettier than real dirt.  My system for accumulating used coffee grounds is to lay the wet grounds flat on a sheet pan and let them air dry for 24 hours.  From there I transfer them to an open Gladware container.  You could also dry them in the oven on very low heat if you wanted to be faster about it.  You'll see me use our coffee ground dirt in other posts (I just haven't written them up yet).  It also doesn't hurt that they smell faintly of coffee.  Yum.

I also grabbed some smaller polished stones that I'd bought a bag of (I think at the Dollar Store?) and keep in a container for sensory play to add some more detail to the world.

S really enjoyed the sticky walls and had lots of fun sticking and unsticking the various bugs. 

I liked the different textural elements in the world - hard stones, scaly tree branch, gritty coffee ground dirt, and soft moss.

Here caterpillar is going for a little walk.  He's thinking he might want to climb the wall!

There he goes!  We love that Safari Ltd miniatures are perfectly sized for little hands.

The colors are so vibrant and the models are so realistic.  This is the only way I'd let S touch a centipede!  In real life those suckers are mean!!!!  

S enjoyed taking all the little bugs on a tour of their environment.

After taking turns with most of the insects, she decided that centipede was her favorite (probably because she isn't allowed to hold the real creatures).

Here she's having a heart-to-heart with centipede about reforming his aggressive biting ways (did you know that a real centipede bite is rumored to be comparable to a bee sting?  Ouch!).  She told me he'd decided to be nice to her and his other insect friends and was not going to bite!  She played with him for around an hour.  And I'm happy to report that, true to his word, he did not bite her.  ;)

S was so enamored with the two butterflies that came in the Insect TOOB that they'd (earlier) flown away to another area of our house and we almost forgot to include them in our photo shoot!  So we decided they would make a quick visit to insect world before Mama put away her camera.  Here they're sunning themselves on the rocks.  With such vibrantly colored wings, it's no wonder S spirited them away!

The cohesive groups of creatures presented in Safari Ltd TOOBS always inspire me to incorporate books with our small world play.  Here's S investigating a book from our insect book round-up.  :)

Disclosure:  As I mentioned above, Safari Ltd did provide the Insect TOOB to us free of charge.  I was not paid for this post.  All opinions are my own; I am not swayed by compensation.  I only review products that are relevant to my blog and that I feel my readers would be interested in learning about.

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.