Fun and Nearly-Free At-Home Projects to Do With Your Kids: Live Butterfly Habitat

Live Butterfly Habitats are fun and educational for both children (from toddlers to about 10 years old) AND adults. They are also relatively inexpensive when you consider the length of time it takes for the caterpillars to develop into butterflies, and the educational value.

If you keep an eye on deal-a-day sites like www.groupon.com or www.kids.woot.com, you can find Live Butterfly Habitats for around $10 (including shipping and handling). However if you are looking for immediate gratification, I have seen them on the Walmart shelf for $14.88. Each habitat includes a coupon for caterpillars, usually for a small shipping fee. 

After puchasing the habitat you can either fill out a form, or go online to redeem your coupon for LIVE caterpillars. You can often choose when you will want them to arrive, so it is easy to work around vacation or summer camp schedules. 

The fun begins as soon as the tiny little box arrives at your door! When you open the box you will find five tiny caterpillars in a sealed plastic jar, with their food already on the bottom. Kids are fascinated watching the caterpillars spin silk and grow over the next week before they build their chrysallid. Once all the caterpillars have formed chrysallids you then transfer them into the habitat itself.  After a few days you will have beautiful butterflies flitting around! In the literature that accompanies the caterpillars you learn that you can feed them sugar water on fresh cut flowers or a balled up paper towel. They also like to drink from fresh cut watermelon. The most fun of all is releasing them from the habitat to fly free.

If you want to boost the educational value of the project print up some free butterfly coloring pages from sites like www.thebutterflysite.com. They also have pamphlets explaining the butterfly life cycle, crosswords, word searches, and many other butterfly related activities that you can print right from you home computer. 

You can also use the project to have your kids be responsible for their first "pet." Personally, I had my daughter check on the caterpillars first thing every morning to make sure that they were doing good. She also "inspected" the chrysallids and fed the butterflies by putting pieces of watermelon in the habitat. Older children can be completely in charge of the process, from when they arrive through the entire life cycle until they are released. 

The Butterfly Site also has more complicated projects that older children may enjoy that are entirely free. Other websites that have more activites and more creepy crawly critters are www.insectlore.com and www.butterflywebsite.com.  If you want a fun outing to reinforce what your children learned at home, visit the Butterfly Exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. But hurry because it is only open through September 5, 2011!