Personal Review of the Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden

I just bought my preschooler the Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden. This kit has been advertised all over the television.  After buying the actual “butterfly garden” where your child can watch the butterflies, you have to spend another five dollars to buy the actual caterpillars.  After receiving the caterpillars, they started to grow and change into cocoons within a few days!  It was amazing to watch this cycle in a jar in our living room.  Once all the caterpillars had tuned into cocoons, you were supposed to take the lid from the small container containing the caterpillars and attach it inside the butterfly garden.  I was hesitant with this step, worrying that I was doing this too early.

My son was watching the cocoons every day and really enjoying his findings.  He asked to look at them and I placed the container where he could see it and then went into the kitchen getting what I needed to transfer the lid to the butterfly garden.  While I was in the kitchen, my son accidentally knocked the container off the coffee table and all but one cocoon detached itself from the lid!  So…. only having one cocoon to transfer, I attached the lid to the butterfly garden and then placed the container with the “fallen” cocoons in it.  I put the butterfly garden aside, hoping that all the cocoons would somehow “overcome the drop” and would hatch.  The next day, I caught the preschooler carrying the butterfly garden through the house!   The small container had spilled out in the bottom, again disturbing the “fallen cocoons,” but the one attached cocoon was still there.

So, with hopes that we will still have one butterfly “come alive,” no one is to touch the butterfly garden until we see a butterfly flying in it!  I believe the butterfly garden is an amazing product, but it HAS to be VERY carefully supervised!  Do not place this where younger kids can get to it without your help and supervision.  I’ll let you know what happens.  If we don’t get any butterflies out of this project, I am going to buy more caterpillars.  Next time I will give this project my FULL attention while the kids are looking at he caterpillars!

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