Life Cycle of the Butterfly

Over the past few weeks the kids and I have been doing butterfly activities. One of my extra kiddos brought a live butterfly garden for us to use. I went on insectlore.com and ordered our caterpillars for $5. That included shipping so not a bad price at all!! Our 5 caterpillars arrived and we watched them over the next week or so as they grew bigger and bigger. One morning we got up and they had each formed a Chrysalis. We then took them and placed them into the butterfly garden to await the big day when they would break out of their shells and we'd have butterflies! The whole process took a little over 2 weeks I think!

The caterpillars ate the food that came with them for several days and then climbed to the top of the container and hung upside down. They are ready to form a Chrysalis.

Once we had all 5 Chrysalises we removed them from the container they arrived in and attached them inside the butterfly garden. Now we just wait for several more days!

Finally after more than 2 weeks from the time they arrived in out mailbox we have butterflies!

We kept them for a week or so feeding them sugar water and then finally let them go! We all enjoyed watching the life cycle!





Here are a few of the crafts we did to go along with the life cycle of the butterfly

We made caterpillars



And butterflies!


We made handprint/footprint flowers and then added little butterflies